The difference between IEEE 802 . 16 / WiMAX and IEEE 802 . 11 / Wi-Fi networks for Telemedicine Applications

Abstract

The term telemedicine refers to the use of telecommunications technology to enable or assist medical care when its participants are separated by distance. This connection could be achieved using any number of telecommunications technologies; the integration of wireless technologies into healthcare devices, infrastructure and systems offers the best hope for substantially improving the efficiency of healthcare delivery personnel and systems. Wireless telemedicine, also referred to as mobile health, which capitalizes on advances of wireless technologies to deliver health care and exchange medical knowledge anywhere and anytime, overcomes most of geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers to facilitate remote diagnosis and monitoring, and transfer of medical data and records. In this paper we investigate the application of integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi broadband wireless access technologies along with the related protocol issues for telemedicine services. The hybrid networks of Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks can provide high data rate and enhanced multimedia services. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a 4th generation cellular telecommunication technology currently based on IEEE 802.16e standard and it is a new telecommunications protocol that provides fixed and fully mobile Internet access. Both of them are evolved from IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.16a, the earlier versions of WMAN standards. The 802.16 standards only specify the physical (PHY) layer and the media access control (MAC) layer of the air interface while the upper layers are not considered. We propose and review IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technologies, and make a comparison between IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX. Then some open research issues in the integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi networks are discussed, radio resource management, Quality of Service (QoS) management, scheduling and connection admission control schemes, as well as handover and mobility management are reviewed and discussed in this paper. Finally, applications and deployment scenarios of integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi for telemedicine services are further deliberated.