A cognitive radio system for e-health applications in a hospital environment

Wireless communications technologies are used to support a variety of electronic health applications to transfer medical data and patient information. However, using wireless communications technology in a healthcare environment poses two major challenges. First, the electromagnetic interference caused to bio-medical devices by wireless devices could critically affect their performance. Second, since different types of e-health applications have different priorities, access to the wireless channel by the corresponding devices needs to be prioritized. In this article we introduce a novel cognitive-radio-based approach to address these challenges in wireless communications for e-health applications in a hospital environment. First, the requirements for a wireless communications system to be used in a healthcare environment are identified, and potential applications of cognitive radio technology for e-health applications are discussed. Then a cognitive radio system is proposed for e-health applications in a hospital environment, which protects the medical devices from harmful interference by adapting the transmit power of wireless devices based on EMI constraints. An EMI-aware handshaking protocol is proposed for channel access by two different types of applications with different priorities. The performance of this cognitive radio system for e-health applications is evaluated through simulations.