IEEE Wireless Communications

Research and development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is motivated by their potential for ubiquitous monitoring and response . Expanded spatial and temporal monitoring coupled with actuation has huge promise for a range of defense, energy, agriculture, and manufacturing applications. However, WSNs still fall well below this potential. In this article I discuss reasons for this gap, based on ... View full abstract»

Discusses the European Commission's Radio Spectrum Policy Group's recent report on cognitive radio. View full abstract»

Real-time medical data about patients' physiological status can be collected simply by using wearable medical sensors based on a body sensor network. However, we lack an efficient, reliable, and secure BSN platform that can meet increasing needs in e-healthcare applications. Many such applications require a BSN to support multiple data rates with reliable and energyefficient data transmission. In ... View full abstract»

Wireless communications technologies are used to support a variety of electronic health applications to transfer medical data and patient information. However, using wireless communications technology in a healthcare environment poses two major challenges. First, the electromagnetic interference caused to bio-medical devices by wireless devices could critically affect their performance. Second, si... View full abstract»

Wireless telemedicine, also referred to as mobile health, which capitalizes on advances of wireless technologies to deliver health care and exchange medical knowledge anywhere and any time, overcomes most of geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers to facilitate remote diagnosis and monitoring, and transfer of medical data and records. In this article we investigate the application... View full abstract»

Radio frequency identification technology has received an increasing amount of attention in the past few years as an important emerging technology. However, the intrinsically passive features of existing RFID systems, to which we refer as first-generation RFID systems, render their adaptation to real-world dynamics in order to efficiently comply with up-to-date application-specific requirements di... View full abstract»

Remote human motion tracking and gait analysis over wireless networks can be used for various e-healthcare systems for fast medical prognosis and diagnosis. However, most existing gait tracking systems rely on expensive equipment and take lengthy processes to collect gait data in a dedicated biomechanical environment, limiting their accessibility to small clinics located in remote areas. In this w... View full abstract»

The wireless body area network has emerged as a new technology for e-healthcare that allows the data of a patient's vital body parameters and movements to be collected by small wearable or implantable sensors and communicated using short-range wireless communication techniques. WBAN has shown great potential in improving healthcare quality, and thus has found a wide range of applications from ubiq... View full abstract»

Patient monitoring provides flexible and powerful patient surveillance through wearable devices at any time and anywhere. The increasing feasibility and convenience of mobile healthcare has already introduced several significant challenges for healthcare providers, policy makers, hospitals, and patients. A major challenge is to provide round-the-clock healthcare services to those patients who requ... View full abstract»

Electronic healthcare is becoming a vital part of our living environment and exhibits advantages over paper-based legacy systems. Privacy is the foremost concern of patients and the biggest impediment to e-healthcare deployment. In addressing privacy issues, conflicts from the functional requirements must be taken into account. One such requirement is efficient and effective response to medical em... View full abstract»

As the baby boom generation is aging, more and more people are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, early detection of which is shown to be vital and necessary for better medical treatments and prolonging life expectancies. In this article we propose a Bluetooth-enabled in-home patient monitoring system, facilitating early detection of Alzheimer's disease. We take advantage of shortrange Bluetooth ... View full abstract»

Advances in wireless technology and supporting infrastructure provide unprecedented opportunity for ubiquitous real-time healthcare and fitness monitoring without constraining the activities of the user. Wirelessly connected miniaturized sensors and actuators placed in, on, and around the body form a body area network for continuous, automated, and unobtrusive monitoring of physiological signs to ... View full abstract»

Advances in computer and communication technology have enabled online healthcare monitoring using miniature sensing devices attached to a patient's body. Data collected in this manner is then delivered in real time, through one or more wireless hops, to the hospital network. In this article we discuss some design alternatives for the wireless portion of an integrated healthcare monitoring system, ... View full abstract»

Compared to traditional wireless networks, a cognitive radio network (CRN) can be built with much more flexibility. In this article we study the performance of supporting telemedicine traffic in a CRN. We first introduce an infrastructure-based CRN for telemedicine, where cognitive base stations sense available spectrum and forward data for associated healthcare stations. We then present strategie... View full abstract»

The wireless local area network standard IEEE 802.11 is the preferred solution for lowcost data services. Key to its success are the 2.4 and 5 GHz unlicensed bands. The transmit power limitations imposed due to regulatory requirements limit the range (coverage) that can be achieved by WLANs in these bands. However, the demand for "larger" wireless infrastructure is emerging, ranging from office/un... View full abstract»