The unceasing emergence of new technologies in wireless and mobile telecommunication networks, combined with the simultaneous rapid advances in information technology, are leading to many new solutions in the field of telemedicine, thus offering more opportunities for improving further existing and supporting new advanced services for healthcare. The objective of this paper is to carry out a practical evaluation of the performance of the GSM and GPRS systems in the transmissionlreception of X-ray images and video in emergency orthopedics cases. As expected, the performance of GPRS is superior to that of GSM. The data transfer rate achieved with GPRS were in the range of 32 Kbps with the download time for typical Xray images of a file size of 200 Kbytes to the mobile device to be in the region of 60 seconds. Similar performance was also recorded in the case of a moving station (simulating the ambulance) for the biggest part of the journey. In conclusion, although the medical imaging downloading timing was in the range of a few minutes, the physicians were very pleased by the benefits offered by the system through the freedom of access, anywhere and anytime even in motion.

The discussion concerning programmable MAC in Body Area Networks (BANs) is due to the demand for simple and low-power sensor nodes. Additionally, the diverse applications in BANs require low-level modifications to support adaptive services or custom functions. In this work, we propose a novel scheme for programmable MAC, which requires a minor modification to the beacon frame of IEEE 802.15.6-2012. Specifically, our main contribution is the attachment of a command to the beacon, which is broadcasted at the beginning of each superframe by the hub. The hub requests an action, typically a modification of a MAC capability field, by the nodes with a metric which satisfies a constraint. Thus, one command at a time, the proposed scheme is applied with a negligible overhead. Two adaptive use cases, based on signal strength, are implemented to demonstrate this scheme. Firstly, the hub requests the nodes with high signal strength to enable relay support and secondly, the hub requests the nodes with low signal strength to set a sleeping pattern. In the first case packet delivery increases significantly, while in the second case each node saves an amount of energy.

A large number of wireless sensor nodes in a certain area results in high contention. Inevitably, the transmissions of any possible critical data packets may fail due to collisions. In this article, we introduce an aspect of human intelligence in wireless sensor networks, influenced by cooperative networking, which enhances the timely delivery of critical data. Mutual aid among sensors (MAAS), is an emergency out-of-the-box medium access control (MAC) function for IEEE 802.15.4-2020. Specifically, the network coordinator detects critical data packets and sets an emergency flag to its next beacon, to inform the nodes that they may overhear data packets. When a node overhears a critical data packet from a neighboring node it switches to sleep mode and stays idle until the end of the superframe. Thus, interference is mitigated locally and temporarily. Simulation results, using the CC2650 radio parameters in OMNeT++, show that interference is reduced significantly, in favor of the timely delivery of critical data packets.

Communication in Body Area Networks (BANs) involves weak signals, due to safety regulations, huge pathloss from the absorption and usually high mobility. In this work, we introduce an improved mobility aware relaying scheme for BANs, as an alternative to the two-hop star topology extension of IEEE 802.15.6-2012, in order to enhance packet delivery. Specifically, an emergency phase (EP) is added after the regular random access phase (RAP1) of the superframe and the connected nodes transmit rescue beacons to reach disconnected nodes. When a disconnected node receives a rescue beacon, it participates in the current EP. The packets are buffered and relayed to the hub by the connected nodes. Simulation results show that it is feasible to receive more packets compared to the standard with a justified increase of energy consumption due to random access which is compensated with increased packet delivery.

Communication in Body Area Networks (BANs) involves extremely weak signals because of safety regulations. Human mobility adds one more layer of complexity as it has an effect on path loss depending on the activity. In this paper, we improve the quality of service (QoS) by searching for the lost nodes. Specifically, an Emergency Phase (EP) is added after RAP1 of IEEE 802.15.6-2012 superframe. The connected nodes transmit rescue beacons to reach distressed nodes, i.e. nodes that are disconnected. If a distressed node receives a rescue beacon, it participates in the current EP. The packets are buffered and relayed to the hub by the connected nodes. Our results show that when EP is enabled it is feasible to reach more nodes.