Congestion Control of Healthcare Packet Routing in 5G Edge Computing Networks

While Edge computing in 5G provides low latency, high-speed, and many other benefits to healthcare communication, due to excessive congestion in the Edge Network, healthcare data packets are not guaranteed to reach doctors’ offices on time. This creates risk for patients’ lives when treated remotely within the Edge Network. In this paper, we investigate the congestion issue in 5G Edge Computing Networks and propose an IoT sensor and SDN-based priority routing of healthcare data in the Edge Network. In our proposed system, an IoT sensor on a patient’s body raises a healthcare data flag that is seen by an SDN router at a 5G macro tower antenna and provides the highest priority to the healthcare data packet while routing within the Edge Computing Networks. A prototype has been built and tested by using TI Launchpads. Test data shows that healthcare packets with IoT and SDN-based prioritization can route to doctors with an average delay of 757 times less than healthcare packets routed without IoT and SDN-based prioritization. Additionally, the proposed system saves medical diagnostic costs and, more importantly, reduces the risk of losing human lives.