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Featured Application: The proposed method serves for the network planning of massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) based 5G networks. This will be beneficial for the mobile network operators who aim to deploy wireless networks that are cost-effective and electromagnetic (EMF) -aware while providing maximal coverage for the users. The rapid development of the number of wireless broadband devices requires that the induced uplink exposure be addressed during the design of the future wireless networks, in addition to the downlink exposure due to the transmission of the base stations. In this paper, the positions and power levels of massive MIMO-LTE (Multiple Input Multiple Output-Long Term Evolution) base stations are optimized towards low power consumption, low downlink and uplink electromagnetic exposure and maximal user coverage. A suburban area in Ghent, Belgium has been considered. The results show that the higher the number of BS antenna elements, the fewer number of BSs the massive MIMO network requires. This leads to a decrease of the downlink exposure (−12% for the electric field and −32% for the downlink dose) and an increase of the uplink exposure (+70% for the uplink dose), whereas both downlink and uplink exposure increase with the number of simultaneous served users (+174% for the electric field and +22% for the uplink SAR). The optimal massive MIMO network presenting the better trade-off between the power consumption, the total dose and the user coverage has been obtained with 37 64-antenna BSs. Moreover, the level of the downlink electromagnetic exposure (electric field) of the massive MIMO network is 5 times lower than the 4G reference scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of early childhood caries (ECC) and severe early childhood caries (s-ECC) in inner-city children in Ghent, Belgium, and to investigate the independent impact of its determinants. Method and Materials: In a nonrandomized cross-sectional research design, all children between 24 and 34 months of age attending the final consultation at a participating Child and Family Health Clinic were included (n = 385). Data on oral hygiene and caries were collected by oral examination. Caries prevalence and oral hygiene were determined according to established criteria. Data on oral health habits and socioeconomic status were obtained by a validated questionnaire. All analyses were performed with ECC and s-ECC as response variables. Results: The mean DMFS was 0.83 (SEM = 0.14). ECC was diagnosed in 18.5% of the children and s-ECC was found in 12.2%. Treatment need was 100%. From the multiple regression analysis it became clear that ethnicity and neighborhood significantly determined ECC. From all oral health-related behavioral variables, only daily use of a bottle with sweetened drinks other than milk or water, frequency of brushing, and quality of oral hygiene as expressed by Plaque Index scores remained significantly associated with ECC. Conclusion: Children whose mothers had an Eastern European nationality at birth and who live in a deprived neighborhood, daily use a bottle with sweetened drinks other than milk or water, brush less than once a day, and have plaque are at higher risk for ECC and s-ECC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication networks comes with a set of new features to satisfy the demand of dataintensive applications: millimeter-wave frequencies, massive antenna arrays, beamforming, dense cells, and so forth. In this paper, we investigate the use of beamforming techniques through various architectures and evaluate the performance of 5G wireless access networks, using a capacity-based network deployment tool. This tool is proposed and applied to a realistic area in Ghent, Belgium, to simulate realistic 5G networks that respond to the instantaneous bit rate required by the active users. The results show that, with beamforming, 5G networks require almost 15% more base stations and 4 times less power to provide more capacity to the users and the same coverage performances, in comparison with the 4G reference network. Moreover, they are 3 times more energy efficient than the 4G network and the hybrid beamforming architecture appears to be a suitable architecture for beamforming to be considered when designing a 5G cellular network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's wireless networks provide us reliable connectivity. However, if a disaster occurs, the whole network could be out of service and people cannot communicate. Using a fast deployable temporally network by mounting small cell base stations on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could solve the problem. Yet, this raises several challenges. We propose a capacity-deployment tool to design the backhaul network for UAV-aided networks and to evaluate the performance of the backhaul network in a realistic scenario in the city center of Ghent, Belgium. This tool assigns simultaneously resources to the ground users—access network—and to the backhaul network, taking into consideration backhaul capacity and power restrictions. We compare three types of backhaul scenarios using a 3.5 GHz link, 3.5 GHz with carrier aggregation (CA) and the 60 GHz band, considering three different types of drones. The results showed that an optimal UAV flight height (80 m) could satisfy both access and backhaul networks; however, full coverage was difficult to achieve. Finally, we discuss the influence of the flight height and the number of requesting users concerning the network performance and propose an optimal configuration and new mechanisms to improve the network capacity, based on realistic restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]