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Reading material: part of Chapter 11 (Winters), pp. 100-103.
Wireless Technologies - General Concepts
- Within wireless volumevs line-of-sight (e.g., IRDA standard)
- One-way vs two-way telecommunication protocols
- Signal strength typically drops with distance
- Usability analysis
- Wireless as an "enabling" technology
Classification scheme
being used in the IEEE
wireless standards process:
- wMAN (metropolitan-area networks or wide-area WANs)
- Cell phone technologies
- "2-G" - digital
- low-bandwidth voice, 8-14 Kbps voice, 900
MHz / 1.7 GHz
- "2.5G" - GSM/GPRS (short text messaging,
email, pictures), WAP/XML
- data: 16-64 Kbps (pay by MB or time or flat?)
- phone or PC cards
- "3G" - still "coming"
- Discussion: How needed?
- wLAN (wireless local area networks)
- License-free bands: 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz (ISM band)
- ~ = IEEE 802.11b/g standards (e.g., WiFi)
- Medium-bandwidth (up to 11 Mbps for 802.11b and
54 Mbps for 802.11g, function of distance)
- Coverage volume ~ size of a small house (30-1000 m)
- wPAN (wireless personal area networks)
- Bluetooth - “Short-range 2-way radio” (10
m, e.g. in room, vehicle)
- License-free
2.4 GHz ISM band
- Person-centered voice/data "radios" (up to 721 Kbps
for data)
- Low-power
- Distributed "radios" that spontaneously
network
- Integrated MAN-LAN-PAN Systems
- Discussion: Wearable devices?
Existing Medical Telemetry Products
- Medical devices: most communicate
via a proprietary system
- Many operate over selected VHF or UHF one-way
broadcast channels
- Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS)
- UHF TV channel 37 (608-614 MHz)
- Medical Information Bus (IEEE
1073) collection of
cross-product interoperability standards
- Medical Informatics/IT/Electronic Healthcare Records
- Most use IEEE 802.11b (e.g., hospitals wings at Zablocki
VAMC)
- Dealing with HIPAA challenging but working
- Tradeoffs
- Supports non-medical use?
- Standards-based transmission?
- Supports Voice, PDAs?
- Uses hospital IT infrastructure?
- HIPAA / confidentiality / security?
- Range?
- Implementation cost?
- World-wide products?
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