Limitations of Frequency Hopping in 2.4 GHz ISM-Band for medical applications due to interference

In the past a number of wireless standards evolved in industry and the consumer market that operate in the unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) Bands especially in the 2.4GHz range. Today these products are well engineered and standardized, so that more and more medical applications consider wireless transmission based on these standards. Especially in the clinical environment radio links will substitute cables and further enable new fields of applications. Also personal healthcare and ambient assisted living are emerging fields for the future. However, in contrast to many consumer applications medical applications need to guarantee interoperability, ensure coexistence with other applications and have very high requirements for robustness, safety and security. There is an upcoming need for investigation if existing radio standards are prepared for the usage in medical applications regarding reliability and interoperability. In this work we will focus on Frequency Hopping and Bluetooth as one of the technologies that has been designed for robustness and coexistence and evaluate the underlying principles by a comprehensive analysis, simulation and measurements. To the best of our knowledge this comprehensive investigation for robustness of wireless transmission based on Frequency Hopping in a heterogeneous mix of interference from standards like WLAN, IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth and proprietary systems in health care environment has not been performed yet. We will conclude the paper by an outlook for further improvement of wireless transmission based on Frequency Hopping suited to the needs of medical applications.