Wireless Telemedicine Services Over Integrated IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX Networks

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. This paper investigates the application of integrated IEEE 802.16/WiMAX and IEEE 802.11/WLAN broadband wireless access technologies along with the related protocol issues for telemedicine services. The authors first reviews IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technologies, and make a comparison between IEEE 802.11/WLAN and IEEE 802.16/WiMAX.