The rapid development of electronic components has resulted in the emergence of newmobile applications targeted at industry and hospital sectors. Moreover, a lack of availablewireless frequencies as result of the growth of wireless systems is becoming a problem.In this thesis we characterize industrial and hospital environments in order to provide theknowledge necessary to asses present and future development of critical wireless applications.Furthermore, we investigate the possibility of using TV white space by analysingthe interference from secondary to primary user in home environments.

Some of the wireless solutions used in industries and hospitals come directly fromsystems designed for home or office, such asWLAN and Bluetooth. These systems are notprepared to handle problems associated with interference of impulsive character found inindustrial processes and electrical systems.

Typically, industrial environments have been classified as reflective environments dueto the metallic structure present in the buildings. In this thesis, we demonstrate that althoughthis may be generally true, some locations in the industry may have special propertieswith wave propagation characteristics in the opposite direction. Stored materials canabsorb wireless signals, resulting in a coverage problem. From the measurement campaignwe are able to distinguish three main classes of indoor environments (highly reflective,medium reflective and low reflective) with different propagation characteristics.

Improving spectrum efficiency can be a solution to the growing demand for wirelessservices and can increase a system’s robustness against interference, particularly in criticalapplications in industrial and hospital environments. One improvement in spectrum efficiencycan be for secondary consumers to reuse unassigned portions of the TV spectrum ata specific time and geographical location. This thesis studies the effect of inserting whitespace devices in the TV broadcast spectrum. Note that any new model must state the maximumpower allocated to secondary users to avoid harmful interference with the primarysignal.

The content of this thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is the most comprehensiveand addresses electromagnetic interference and multipath characterization ofindustrial environments. In this part, we have developed a method for channel characterizationfor complex electromagnetic environments and have produced results from differentindustrial environments. The second part presents a preliminary study that characterizesthe electromagnetic interference in a hospital environment. The third part is a study ofsecondary users reusing the TV white spaces.