## 1 Introduction
All the solutions from the matrix are compared to determine the best one: the solution that results in the fewer number of interferences for the given interference range, either produced by coexisting networks or by external factors (such as malicious attacks). The proposed method can be used in two complementary scenarios: (a) as a deployment planning supporting tool in order to decide on the best frequency channels, channel quality metrics and frequency hopping techniques and (b) as a runtime management component for the dynamic allocation of communication frequency channel. In the former case, a network topology can be planned based on the frequency channel subset, channel hop sequence and the number of hops of each node to the gateway. In the latter case, the management component can be implemented into a device which will monitor the quality of the environment using the selected quality metric and dynamically adapt to the environment conditions by switching to the most suitable frequency hopping technique. Additionally, the method can also take into account the characteristics of constrained systems (either computationally or energetically) in order to select the most suitable solution. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first attempt to define a method that homogenizes, combines and compares several frequency-hopping techniques for network deployment and real-time adaptation. As will be shown in Section 3, current approaches compare either different frequency hopping techniques or characterization metrics, but no common comparison is made to specify the best solution taking into account frequency channel quality behaviour and its evolution over time. No technique found in the SoTA adapts the frequency hopping technique dynamically to the environment conditions. Several frequency hopping techniques are analysed, but their use is not modified at run time (nor the quality metric) if the interferences pattern (and frequency channel quality) changes in the medium-long term. This paper only considers the theoretic validation of the proposed method in simulated scenarios. The method has been implemented as a Matlab tool, which has been used in this work for testing and validation purposes. The validation considers realistic network coexistence and interference scenarios and applies the method to compute the best solution for the given scenario, evaluating frequency channel interference in terms of Packet Error Rate (PER). Thus, the Matlab tool is used as a deployment planning supporting tool and its efficiency is evaluated. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents a summary of the current interference avoidance mechanisms used in standard communication protocols, followed by Section 3 which includes the related work for this paper. Section 4 summarizes the metrics used by the method to characterize and determine the quality of the available frequency channels. Section 5 introduces the different frequency hopping techniques considered by the method. Section 6 describes the core of the method and Section 7 presents the evaluation. Finally, Section 8 summarizes and concludes the paper pointing out future steps.