Declaration of AuthorshipI hereby certify that this thesis is entirely my own original work except where otherwise indicated. I am aware of the University's regulations concerning plagiarism, including those concerning consequent disciplinary actions. Any use of the works of any other author, in any form, is properly acknowledged at their point of use. 1 F2 (•; •, •; •) The regularized generalized hypergeomtric function 1 F 1 (•; •; •) The confluent hypergeometric function of the first kind xiv Chapter 1 for Mobile Communications (GSM) and the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks [4] [5], the widely used Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks [6], and the evolving fifth Generation (5G) networks [7] [8] which are anticipated to provide the communication infrastructure for public safety, disaster relief, and rescue operations.• Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) [9] that are widely used for providing connectivity to internet gateways, printers and other shared resources in homes, office buildings, schools, universities, hospitals, malls, airports, and so on.• Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) [10] which is a group of technologies that have many attractive features such as operating at low cost, having high power efficiency, connecting large number of low rate battery-powered devices over up to 5 kilometers in urban zones and 40 kilometers in rural zones. These features make LPWANs applicable in smart agriculture through monitoring of cattle, soil moisture, levels of chemicals in soil; smart city through smart street lights, parking, waste management, metering, flood sensors; smart healthcare through tracking of patients with Alzheimer's and dementia, monitoring of refrigerators storing vaccines, medications, blood, and so on.• Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs) and ZigBee Networks [11][12][13] which are employed in industrial control, environmental monitoring, health date collection, home automation, intruder and smoke warning, indoor localization, and disaster response.
