3G and 4G Mobile Communication in Telemedicine

Literature Survey
Emerging mobile communication technologies for health
The advances and convergence of information technology and communication
technologies are leading to the emergence of a new type of information infrastructure
that has the potential of supporting an array of advanced services for health care.
Telemedicine is delivery of health care information across distances using telecom
technologies like video-conferencing, Internet or a video/image transmission where a
patient residing in remote area can get medical treatment from specialist doctors.
Mobile telemedicine is a new research area that exploits recent advances in mobile
communication technologies providing the potential for highly flexible medical
services that are not possible with standard telephony. Telemedicine systems based
on wireless technologies can effectively provide health care services in understaffed
areas like rural health centers, ambulance vehicles, ships, trains, airplanes and
patient's homes.
In recent years, the main wireless technologies that have been used in wireless
telemedicine are: - GSM, GPRS, satellite systems, 3G systems, Wireless LAN,
Bluetooth and WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) based systems . 4G systems and
advances in medical sensor technologies are expected to make healthcare delivery
more effective. These technological advances have enabled the introduction of a
broad range of telemedicine applications, such as Tele-radiology, Tele-consultation,
Tele-surgery, remote-patient monitoring and health care record management that are
supported by computer networks and wireless communication. In a developing
country like India, there is huge inequality in health-care distribution. With majority
of our population living in rural area and majority of specialized doctors catering to
the urban population, telemedicine remains the only solution for improved health
care at reduced cost and improved access.
Mobile Telemedicine System
Telemedicine System consists of an interface between hardware, software and
communication channel to eventually bridge two geographical locations to exchange
medical information between two locations. The hardware consists of computer,
printer, scanner, video conferencing equipment etc. The software enables the
acquisition of patient information (images, reports, films etc.)

Mobile telemedicine is a new research area that exploits recent advances in mobile
telecommunications technologies having the potential for highly flexible medical
services that are not possible with standard telephony. Nowadays, modern wireless
communications technologies like GSM, GPRS, satellite, Wireless LAN, mobile IP,
and 3G system standards allow the operation of mobile telemedicine system, freeing
the medical personnel and/or the subject monitored bound to a fixed location.
Today's, Telemedicine systems are supported by state of the art Technologies like
Interactive video, high resolution monitors, high speed computer networks and
switching systems and telecommunication super highways including fiber optic,
satellites, and cellular telephony. The recent developments in digital mobile
telephonic technologies (and their impact on mobility issues in different telemedical
and telecare applications) are closely reflected in the fast growing commercial
domain of mobile telemedicine services. Current examples include mobile ECG
transmission, Video images and Tale-radiology, mobile ambulance services for
emergency medical care and other telemedical monitoring systems.
Ambulances, rural health centers (RHC), incidents occurring in backward areas or
remote health locations such as ships navigating in wide seas and airplanes are
common examples of possible emergency sites, while critical care telemetry and
telemedicine home follow-ups are important issues of telemonitoring. In order to
meet the growing healthcare demands it is required to combine the real-time and
store and forward facilities that consists of a base unit and a telemedicine unit where
this integrated system performs the following tasks: Handles emergency cases in ambulances, RHC or ships by using telemedicine
unit at the emergency site and the expert's medical consultation at the base
unit;
Enhances intensive health care provision by providing the telemedicine unit to
doctor while the base unit is incorporated with the ICU's in- house telemetry
system.
Enables home telemonitoring by installing the telemedicine unit at the
patient's home while the base unit remains at the physician's office or hospital.

Emerging Mobile Communication Technologies in Telemedicine

In recent years, there has been increased research on wireless telemedicine using
current mobile communication systems especially in USA and Europe. The
limited bandwidth of the current generation of cellular telecommunication

systems has restricted the wider use of these systems within the most promising
segments of the health care structures in general. The concept of including highspeed data and multimedia services is emerging as one of the main points of the
future telecommunication and multimedia priorities with the relevant benefits to
health care systems. The new wireless technologies will allow the physicians and
non-critical patients to roam freely, while maintaining the critical medical
information. Some of the emerging wireless technologies to be used in wireless
telemedicine are discussed below in brief.
A. GSM and GPRS Systems
GSM provides data transfer speeds up to 9.6 kbps or up to 43.3 kbps when
HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) is used. The theoretical maximum
downlink data rate for GPRS is 171.2 kbps (assuming coding scheme 4 and
simultaneous utilization of eight time slots).

GPRS technology is packet-based and designed to work in parallel with the

second-generation TDMA systems such as GSM, PDC (Personal Digital
Cellular)that are used for voice communications. GPRS uses a multiple of the one
of the eight radio channel time slots in the 200 kHz frequency band allocated for
a carrier frequency to enable data speed of up to 115 kbps. The data are
packetized and transported over public land mobile networks (PLMN) using an IP
backbone so that mobile users can access services on the Internet, such as
SMTP/POP- based e-mail, ftp, and HTTP-based web services.
EDGE technology is a standard that has been specified to enhance the throughput
per time slot for both HSCSD and GPRS. The enhancement of HSCSD is called
ECSD, whereas the enhancement of GPRS is called EGPRS. In ECSD, the
maximum data rate per time slot will triple and the peak throughput will exceed
384 kbps.
Most of the telemedicine applications using GSM/GPRS networks concern the
transmission of bio-signals and images in order to support pre-hospital
treatments.
B. Third Generation (3G) Wireless Networks

The evolution of mobile telecommunication systems from second generation (2G)

to 2.5 G and 3G (W-CDMA, CDMA-2000, TD-CDMA) systems will be able to
provide much faster data transfer rates thus enabling the design and development
of more effective mobile telemedicine systems.
1. A data rate of 144kbps for users in high-speed motor vehicles over large
areas and data rates of 384 kbps for slow-moving objects and persons over
small areas. These data rates will be large enough for medical data and
image transmissions in these scenarios.
2. Phased in support for 2.084 Mbps operation for office use. These large
rates will provide for laptop telemedicine with mobile multimedia
applications.
Transmission of bandwidth-hungry medical data such as images or real-time
video over limited and fluctuant 3G link is challenging issue. The telemedicine
system must manage this data and perform necessary transformations to ensure
the smooth transmission through the low-speed and fluctuant 3G link.
C. Fourth-Generation (4G) Vision
It is expected that 4G will integrate existing wireless technologies including
UMTS, GSM, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Ultra wide band and other
newly developed technologies into a seamless system. Some expected key
features of 4G networks can be summarized as follows:
1. High usability 4G networks are all IP-based heterogeneous networks that
allow user to access a wide range of application services provided by
multiple wireless networks.
2. Support for high speed multimedia services at low transmission cost.
3. Personalized services and Integrated applications.
The main technological characteristics of 4G systems are expected to be as
follows:
1. Transmission speed higher than in 3G(min 50100 Mbps, average 200
Mbps);

2. System capacity larger than in 3G by ten times;

3. Transmission cost per bit 1/10 to 1/100 of that of 3G;
4. Support for internet protocols (IPv6);
5. Various quality of service (QoS) providing many kinds of multimedia
services corresponding to users demand;
6. User friendly services with very fast access.
4G technology will support the development of new and effective medical care
delivery systems into the 21st century. The new wireless technologies will allow
both physicians and non-critical patients to roam freely, while maintaining access
to critical patient data and medical knowledge.
D. IEEE 802.16/WiMAX systems
The emerging IEEE 802.16x Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technology
WiMAX (World wide interoperability for Microwave Access) allows
interoperability and combines the benefits that other wireless technologies and
leads a path towards 4G wireless technology in the future. The WiMAX/IEEE
802.16 operates on both the unlicensed and licensed bands between 2GHz and 66
GHz. The maximum throughput expected for WiMAX is 70 Mbps. WiMAX can
achieve a maximum range of up to 50 km. Due to these specific features it is
considered a suitable candidate for high-speed telemedicine services particularly
in rural and developing areas where broadband connectivity is unavailable. Main
reasons for using WiMAX over WLAN for telemedicine applications such as
patient monitoring are: Broadband access to both fixed and mobile networks;
high bandwidth for quality image transfer; good quality video-conferencing
between a physician and a patient; MAC layer security features for WiMAX for
access control and encryption functions.
E. Satellite systems
The satellite communication system offers a number of advantages including: 1. Wide geographic coverage including the interconnection of remote
terrestrial network (islands).

2. Bandwidth on demand, or Demand Assignment Multiple Access (DAMA)

capabilities.
3. An alternative to damaged fiber-optic network for disaster recovery
options.
4. Multipoint-to-multipoint communication facilitated by Internet and
broadcasting capabilities of satellites.
Satellite systems are able to provide a variety of data transfer rates starting from
2.4 kbps and moving to high speed data rates up to 2x 64kbps, and even more.
Satellite links also have the advantage of operating all over the world.
F. WAP- Based Telemedicine System
A current trend in telecommunication is the convergence of wireless
communication and computer network technologies and the emergence of
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) devices. Since WAP will also be a common
feature found in future mobile communication devices, it is worthwhile to
investigate its use in telemedicine.
The merging of the Internet and mobile computing is promoting the development
of handheld devices, wireless infrastructures, application programming languages
and protocols, all aiming to provide mobile Internet access. Among these is the
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), a communication protocol and application
environment for the deployment of information resources, advanced telephony
services, and Internet access from mobile devices. Typical applications of WAP
include news, games, e-banking, e-shopping and e-mail. A WAP-based
telemedicine system has been developed with the aim to utilize WAP devices as
mobile access terminals for general inquiry in store-and forward mode.

G. Wireless IP for Telemedicine

Wireless and IP-based telecommunication networks will significantly enhance the
current methodologies of telemedicine and tele-care systems that are not possible
with conventional telephony. IP telephony, known as voice over IP (VoIP),
promises to deliver real time, two way synchronous voice and data traffic over
packet-switched IP based networks. Supporting telephony services over IP

network is considered a promising trend in the telecommunications business. It

has been increasingly used as alternatives to the traditional circuit-switched
networks for carrying voice traffic. IP-based networks represent the future trends
towards convergence of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), mobile
network, fixed wireless and the Internet in the communication industry. With the
second-generation mobile networks shifting to IP platforms, evolving 3G
systems, IP appears to have emerged as the unifying platform for all forms of
communications. Because IP technology uses network capacity more efficiently,
it has the potential to provide reduced cost, greater flexibility, and better
manageability and enhanced services. The IP telephony technology can be
extended to create limitless possibilities for the transmission of voice alone, or in
combination with any other digitizable information. These features are essential
for telemedicine to deliver integrated multimedia medical information to the
underserved population or any other people in need.
H. Wireless LAN
Wireless LAN (WLAN), Bluetooth and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) are
implemented as an extension to or as an alternative for wired LAN to make the
communication more flexible and powerful. Wireless LAN is effectively Ethernet
without wires. It allows users to access a data networks like the Internet at high
speed of up to 11 megabits per seconds (Mbps) as long as users are located within
a relative short range (typically 3050 meters indoors and 100500 meters
outdoors) of a WLAN base station. Wireless LAN connectivity is mostly required
to connect and facilitate diagnostic data exchange between various telemedicine
systems inside a hospital through wireless. This link provides very high-speed
data exchange capability between two systems. The wireless LAN feature is
helpful for mobility in a hospital campus. WLAN enabled hand- held terminals
will make the access to the information available at any place, any time.
I. Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN)
WPANs are defined with IEEE standard 802.15. The most relevant enabling
technologies for mobile-Health system are Bluetooth and ZigBee.
Bluetooth is a wireless technology that enables any electrical device to
communicate in the 2.5 GHz ISM (license free) frequency band. It allows devices
such as mobile phones, headsets, PDAs and portable computers to communicate
and send data to each other without the need for wires or cable to link any two
devices together. It has been specifically designed as a low-cost, low size, and

low power radio technology, which is particularly suited to the short range
personal area network (PAN) application. That is what distinguishes it from the
wireless LAN technology. The main features of Bluetooth are: 1. Operates in 2.4 GHz frequency band without license for wireless
communication.
2. Real-time data transfer usually possible between 10 to 100 meters.
3. Close proximity not required as with infrared data (IrDA) communication
devices since Bluetooth does not suffer from obstacles such as walls.
4. Supports both point to- point wireless communications without cables
between mobile phones and personal computers as well as point-tomultipoint connections to enable adhoc local wireless networks.
5. 400 kbps of data transmission rate symmetrically or 700 to 150 kbps of
data rate asymmetrically.
ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4 standard) has been developed as a low data rate solution
with very long battery life and very low complexity. It is intended to operate in an
unlicensed international frequency band. The standard uses 16 channels at 2.4
GHz, ten channels at 902928 MHz, and one channel at 868870 MHz. The
maximum data rates for each band are 250, 40 and 20 kbps respectively.
J. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN)
Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) of intelligent medical sensors present an
emerging technology which can offer health-care services far beyond what the
traditional telemedical systems can possibly provide. Wireless Intelligent sensors
(WISE) perform data acquisition and limited processing. A typical WBAN
consists of a number of inexpensive, lightweight and miniature sensor platforms,
each featuring one or more physiological sensor, e.g. Motion sensor, ECGs,
EMGs and EEGs. The sensor could be located on the body as tiny intelligent
patches, integrated into clothing or implanted below the skin or muscles.
All messages from sensors are collected by the Network controller and processed
on a personal server. A personal server application can run on a PDA, mobile
phone or PC. Network controller could be an add-on device or integrated into the
personal server.

WBAN based m-Health technologies have great potential for continuous

monitoring in ambulatory settings, early detection of abnormal conditions, and
supervised rehabilitation.

3G and 4G in Telemedicine

Mobile phones are the backbone of mobile communications and have

experienced explosive growth. Generations of mobile phone are divided into four
as of today based on communication system between base stations.
First-generation (1G) mobile phone is the analogue mobile phone using FDMA
(Frequency Division Multiple Access) system. Originally this was introduced as a
phone for the automobile in the 1980s. It was heavy but could carry in any case.
The service of first generation mobile phone was already terminated in some
countries.
In second-generation (2G) mobile phone, communication was digitalized and
TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) system was adopted. Usability of radio
wave was dramatically improved. Light weight and cost effective mobile phones
are rapidly developed, so that the number of mobile phones is propagated late
1990s. Time when 2G mobile phones are penetrated into the world is the time
when the carriers are strongly promoting sales of mobile phones. They tried to
gain profit by making people use the phones but not selling the equipment itself.
During that period, so-called one-yen phones were sold. There are two types of
systems for 2G communication system; one is PDC (Personal Digital Cellular)
adopted by NTT DoCoMo and J-phone, the other is GSM (Global System for
Mobile Communications) widely used in European countries. 2G technology is
currently matured. PHS (Personal Handy Phone) also is included in secondgeneration communication system.
In 1998, au began to provide cdma One service using CDMA system, which was
called 2.5G service following the 2G mobile phone service. Also many European
mobile phone carriers started GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) service
which enables them to use high-speed transmission at about 115 kbps in the
network of GSM system. This service put importance into data transmission
rather than communication.
Third-Generation (3G) mobile phone is a digital mobile phone based on the ITU
(International Telecommunication Union) IMT-2000 standard. Basically CDMA

(Code Division Multiple Access) system is used and various kinds of services
were also provided by using high-speed data transmission and multimedia. NTT
started the first experimental 3G service FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Multimedia
Access) adopting W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) in May,
2001 and real introduction of FOMA into the market was made in October, 2001.
Since the 3G mobile phone adopts CDMA system, noise and cutoff in
communication is reduced, and high-speed data transmission can be done at the
rate of 384 kbps at the most which was not acquired in 2G mobile phones.
4G, short for fourth generation, is the fourth generation of mobile
telecommunications technology, succeeding 3G. A 4G system, in addition to the
usual voice and other services of 3G, provides mobile broadband Internet access,
for example to laptops with wireless modems, to smartphones, and to other
mobile devices. Potential and current applications include amended mobile web
access, IP telephony, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, video
conferencing, 3D television, and cloud computing.
Two 4G candidate systems are commercially deployed: the Mobile WiMAX
standard (first used in South Korea in 2007), and the first-release Long Term
Evolution (LTE) standard (in Oslo, Norway and Stockholm, Sweden since 2009).
It has however been debated if these first-release versions should be considered to
be 4G or not.

Applications
Third-generation mobile phones are expected to be extremely popular and fuel
further replacement demand. Telecommunication firms all over the world are
preparing to deploy third-generation networks. 3G mobiles provide a next
generation mobile phone service that aims to offer high-speed 2Mb/s
communication using high transmission efficiency in the high frequency 2GHz
band. This will allow multimedia communication (such as animated images), a
typical example of which is viewing TV on a mobile phone. This offers a
groundbreaking way to use mobile phones. Major mobile phone manufacturers
such as Nokia, Motorola, etc. begin to introduce W-CDMA/GSM dual mode
phone into the market as a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System) standard. In some countries, Vodafone introduced dual mode UMTS
phones made by Nokia, Motorola, and SEMC. This is the first time in the history
that of the phone targeted for global business is introduced into the domestic
market since its digitalization. It is predicted that entry of overseas mobile phone
manufacturers will change the domestic market share in some countries.

3G in overseas were only seen in the specific area such as South Korea and Hong
Kong and the service began in Europe at the beginning of 2004. In October 2000,
South Korea's SK Telecom launched the world's first commercial IMT -2000 3G
service using CDMA2000 IX. NTT DoCoMo of Japan launched one year later,
based on W-CDMA. SK Telecom was the first again with CDMA2000 1xEV-DO
in January 2002, offering wireless access to multimedia content at broadband
speeds. In addition to increasing capacity for more users, 3G services deliver fast
and secure wireless connections to the Internet and exciting new data applications
for mobile devices. These applications and services include position location and
mapping, audio and video content, application downloading over the airwavesmultimedia messaging, video conferencing, multi-user games and more.
Many firms are trying to place smart card functions in phones so that they can be
used as ticket and money, etc. Last summer, using noncontact IC function, NTT
DoCoMo began to provide various services including electronic money, credit
card, electronic ticket, and in/out management of offices. By using noncontact IC
function, mobile phone becomes electric wallet. NTT DoCoMo now uses
Sony's Felica which could be a defacto standard of noncontact IC in the world.
Also, home security and remote monitoring system is another example of 3G
mobile phone applications. You can monitor your home from a remote location,
not just view images of what is happening around the premises via a video
camera, but also monitor the thermostat of your house. There is a central box to
link all of the monitoring devices and a portal you can access anywhere via a web
browser or mobile phone to see what's happening in your home.
3G technology is also applied for location-based services (LBS). People are
expected to use the location capabilities of phones to find nearby restaurants,
shops, stations, hotels, etc. GPS-equipped mobile phones can precisely indicate
the position of wandering elderly persons or small lost children.
Currently, over millions of people need daily personal assistance and millions
have chronic disabilities. Mobile phone service became ubiquitously available
throughout the world. When it becomes 3G, relatively high volumes of digital
information can be carried. 3G mobile phone offers major advantages for
interactive video traffic. With the emergence of mobile phone networks, a number
of systems which use mobile phones to transfer vital signs such as
electrocardiogram (ECG) and heart rate have increased instead of early mobile
medical system using satellites to establish communications between remote sites
and base hospitals.

The evolution of current 3G wireless communication and mobile network

technologies will be the main driving force for the future developments in
telemedicine. 3G wireless technology represents the convergence of various
second-generation wireless systems. One of the most important aspects of 3G
technology is its ability to unify existing mobile standards, such as CDMA, GMS,
and TDMA under one umbrella.
It is predicted that the proportion of 3G mobile phones would overtake that of 2G
mobile phones by 2006. The carrier who can carry on the generation change from
2G to 3G well would take a lead in mobile phone market.
3G mobile phone applications are found in various fields in the market but the
possibilities for telemedicine are much higher than that of other areas. In the near
future, the increasing medical data traffic and demand from different clinical
applications and mobile medical sensors will be compatible with the data rates of
current 3G systems. Specifically, in a society penetrated by 3G systems, home
medical care and remote diagnosis will become common. Check-up by specialists
and prescription of drugs will enable at home. In under-populated areas, virtual
hospitals with no resident doctors will be realized based on high resolution
transmission technologies and remote surgery. Also preventive medical care will
be emphasized for individual health management. Medical data will be constantly
transmitted to the hospital through built-in sensor and monitoring system and
result will be fed back to the patients.

Recent Research in Telemedicine using 3G and 4G

Works on Design and development of a modular mobile integrated
telemedicine system using a conventional mobile telephone is being
discussed in the literature. The system is capable of transmitting an
electrocardiogram (ECG) from a patient via the GSM cellular network to
some remote receiving point. This allows the transmission of medical data
from sensors, attached to patients at home or during normal day-to-day
activities or in emergency situations, to a hospital or Medical Centre. To
implement such a system is a challenging and innovative aim that is the
fulfillment of a real need in society. This is based on the realistic
assumption that telemedicine will have to adapt to the anticipated global

development of personal mobile telecommunications in the next few

years. Any system therefore needs to be future-proofed in view of
constantly evolving telecommunications technology and with special
regard to the advent of the 3G protocol as a replacement for the present
GSM protocol.
A mobile teletrauma system using 3G networks
It introduces a cost-effective portable teletrauma system that assists
health-care centers in providing prehospital trauma care. Simultaneous
transmission of a patient's video, medical images, and electrocardiogram
signals, which is required throughout the prehospital procedure, is
demonstrated over commercially available 3G wireless cellular data
service. Moreover, the physician can remotely control the information
sent from the patient side. Such a technology will allow a trauma specialist
to be virtually present at the remote location and participate in
prehospital care, which improves the quality of trauma care and can
potentially reduce mortality and morbidity. To alleviate the limited and
fluctuant bandwidth barriers of the wireless cellular link, the system
adapts to network conditions through media transformations, data
prioritization, and application-level congestion control methods.
Experimental evaluation of the system prototype over real network
conditions, transmitting different media types between the trauma patient
and hospital unit, is encouraging.

Design of embedded remote monitoring terminal based on 3G

network
It describes terminal of remote monitoring system based on embedded
and 3G networks. It implements the acquisition of physiological
parameters such as the ECG, blood pressure, respiration, blood oxygen,
and sends the read-time data to remote doctor workstation for display and
storage through the 3G network. It uses Linux system migration of the
monitoring terminal, design of device driver, 3G wireless module and
standardized software interface.

3G Smartphone Technologies for Generating Personal Social

Network Contact Distributions and Graphs
This presents a novel means of collecting and analyzing data related to
personal social contact networks. The work developed a custom
application for Smart phones that support Bluetooth connectivity, as
representative of the ensemble of many consumer electronic products and
can be used to infer users' proximity, contact duration, and GPS-based
information. In many cases this is augmented by device meta identity. The
3G application, data storage and retrieval is discussed in detail.
Preliminary data were collected (device-device proximity, duration, and
location) gathered in pilot testing on the Blackberry Storm and HTC Hero
(Android). Data are presented as distributions and visualization tools for
evolving contact graphs, including Pareto distributions and power law
exponents generated representative of face to face contacts. Finally, data
are then demonstrated to be useful in estimating the potential of infection
spread (e.g. respiratory illness), where a key transmission vector is
person-person contact. A variant of the standard SIR agent based model is
developed, with agent contacts guided by contact distributions extracted
from the data.
A 3G/WiFi-enabled 6LoWPAN-based U-healthcare system for
ubiquitous real-time monitoring and data logging
Ubiquitous healthcare (U-healthcare) systems are expected to offer
flexible and resilient high-end technological solutions enabling remote
monitoring of patients health status in real-time and provisioning of
feedback and remote actions by healthcare providers. It presents a
6LowPAN based U-healthcare platform that contributes to the realization
of the above expectation. The proposed system comprises two sensor
nodes sending temperature data and ECG signals to a remote processing
unit. These sensors are being assigned an IPv6 address to enable the
Internet-of-Things (IoT) functionality. A 6LowPAN-enabled edge router,
connected to a PC, is serving as a base station through a serial interface, to
collect data from the sensor nodes. Furthermore, a program interfacing
through a Serial-Line-Internet-Protocol (SLIP) and running on the PC
provides a network interface that receives IPv6 packets from the edge
router. The above system is enhanced by having the application save
readings from the sensors into a file that can be downloaded by a remote
server using a free Cloud service such as UbuntuOne. This enhancement
makes the system robust against data loss especially for outdoor

healthcare services, where the 3G/4G connectivity may get lost because of
signal quality fluctuations. The system provided a proof of concept of
successful remote U-healthcare monitoring illustrating the IoT
functionality and involving 3G/4G connectivity while being enhanced by a
cloud-based backup.
A new system of electrocardiogram diagnose based on
telemedicine
This introduces a design of new system to diagnose the electrocardiogram.
This system uses the 3G net as the way to translate the data, and the smart
phone as the client platform. This is new application of telemedicine, in
this way the patients will get diagnose much more convenient.
A next-generation mobile telemedicine testbed based on 3G
cellular standard
The digital cellular network can play an important role in mobile
telemedicine applications. Since the network is gradually evolving from
the second generation (2G), such as GSM, to the third generation (3G), a
testbed based on the 3G cellular standard is proposed for next-generation
mobile telemedicine. The 3G-based testbed (12.2 kbps~2 Mbps) has
higher and wider data transmission rates than its 2G version (up to 9.6
kbps). Thus, more medical services can be designed and tested using this
new testbed. To demonstrate the usefulness of the testbed, we deign a
simple telecardiology system as an example. Experimental results show
that the proposed testbed has the potential to evaluate and improve the
quality of service (QoS) for mobile medical applications using the 3G
cellular standard