Community Healthcare Mesh Network Engineering in White Space Frequencies The transition from analog to digital television has availed new spectrum called white space, which can be used to boost the capacity of wireless networks on an opportunistic basis. One sector in which there is a need to use white space frequencies is the healthcare sector because of existent protocols which are using it and the white space frequency is not as crowded as WiFi. However, design simulations of wireless communication networks in white space frequencies have revealed dense network topology because of better signal propagation and penetration properties of white space frequencies. Consequently, communication networks designed in white space frequencies will require topology reduction for better communication and routing. Therefore, this paper proposes a linkbased topology reduction algorithm to reduce a dense mesh network topology designed in white space frequencies into a sparse mesh network topology. The paper also proposes a network optimization function to introduce a hierarchical backbonebased network topology from the sparse network topology for better scalability. Performance evaluation on the proposed designs show that the designs can guide network engineers to select the most relevant performance metrics during a network feasibility study in white space frequencies, aimed at guiding the implementation process.

The King is Dead Long Live the King! Towards Systematic Performance Evaluation of Heterogeneous Bluetooth Mesh Networks in Real World Environments Wireless networks based on Bluetooth mesh (BM) promise a variety of Internet of Things applications from healthcare monitoring to smart buildings. BM introduces a novel network concept that supports up to 32767 devices and 127 hops. So far no readily available dataset or toolset exists to perform systematic indepth performance analysis of this standard.In this paper, we present insights on the performance and practical usability of BM. We conduct realistic smart office experiments with heterogeneous devices distributed throughout an area of approximately 1100m2. By varying network parameters and BM node features, we collect the first public available BM dataset. Based on our experience, the use of current implementations is errorprone due to the complexity of BM. To facilitate researchers to conduct further experiments, we propose a toolset to configure and systematically evaluate BM performance. Finally we discuss several pitfalls that should be avoided in designing and deploying such networks.