Authors:
Flavia Martelli
1
;
Leonardo Goratti
2
and
Jussi Haapola
2
Affiliations:
1
Wilab, CNIT, University of Bologna, Italy
;
2
CWC, University of Oulu, Finland
Keyword(s):
Medium Access Control, ultra wideband, capture effect, medical applications, IEEE 802.15.4a.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cloud Computing
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
e-Health
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Health Information Systems
;
Mobile Technologies
;
Mobile Technologies for Healthcare Applications
;
Neural Rehabilitation
;
Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics
;
Platforms and Applications
;
Software Engineering
;
Telemedicine
Abstract:
In this paper the feasibility of contention-based medium access control (MAC) protocols using impulse radio technology for medical ICT scenarios is shown. The particular scenario refers to a hospital waiting room in which people enter wearing a number of sensors for continuous monitoring of health status. The evaluation of the feasibility is founded on the implementation of slotted Aloha (S-Aloha) and preamble sense multiple access (PSMA) MAC protocols, the physical layer characteristics and the non-coherent receiver scheme for impulse radio ultra wideband (IR-UWB) in the network simulator Opnet. Simulated throughput and delay performance under Poisson traffic assumption are compared with analytical results for validation purposes. The simulation of the medical scenario, not easily tractable by analysis, accounts for important characteristics like capture effect and different bit rates of the sensors that monitor various vital functions. The results show that the used MAC protocols a
re scalable within the scenario constraints and PSMA exhibits a better delay performance than S-Aloha.
(More)