Wireless telemedicine services over integrated IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX networks

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 any time, overcomes most of geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers to facilitate remote diagnosis and monitoring, and transfer of medical data and records. In this article we investigate the application of integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/WLAN broadband wireless access technologies along with the related protocol issues for telemedicine services. We first review IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technologies, and make a comparison between IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX. Then some open research issues in the integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/WLAN networks are discussed, especially regarding QoS support, radio resource management, scheduling and connection admission control schemes, as well as handover and mobility management. Finally, applications and deployment scenarios of integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/WLAN for telemedicine services are further deliberated.