Multiservice temedicine application over an emulated DVB-RCS satellite link

To exchange medical data between two distant locations is of paramount importance in a significant number of scenarios (emergency, developing countries, home care, training, etc.). This paper presents performance evaluation, through emulation and using real medical equipment, of a Telemedicine application including Electro-encephalographic (EEG) data, audio, video and text. All the application flows will be routed through an IP-based network emulator, which introduces the same effects of the transmission over a real satellite link, including a satellite segment which adopts the ETSI standard DVB-RCS EN301-790. The Telemedicine application aims to support a typical clinical exam, commonly used for the diagnosis of several neurological disorders, but with the neurologist located in a different place with respect to the patient. The paper describes in particular the setup and technical issues in case the application is used over a satellite network. Feasibility and performance evaluation, checked by the neurologist, are carried out using a DVB-RCS emulated environment (called SNEP), providing some remarks on the setup and comments on the obtained results.