LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary radio communication technology exploiting license-free frequency bands, allowing low-rate information exchange over long distances with very low power consumption. Conventional environmental monitoring sensors have the disadvantage of being in fixed positions and distributed over wide areas, thus providing measurements with a spatially insufficient level of detail. Since public transport vehicles travel continuously within cities, they are ideal to house portable monitoring systems for environmental pollution and meteorological parameters. The paper presents a feasibility analysis of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to collect this information from the vehicles conveying it to a central node for processing. The communication system is realized by deploying a layer-structured, fault-resistant, multi-hop Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based on the LoRa technology. Both a theoretical study about electromagnetic propagation and network architecture are addressed with consideration of potential practical network realization.

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This paper investigates the electromagnetic compatibility of 45 critical care medical devices (infusion pumps, defibrillators, monitors, lung ventilators, anesthesia machines and external pacemakers) with various types of wireless local area network (WLAN, IEEE 802.11 b/g, 2.45 GHz, 100 mW) adapters. Interference is evaluated by performing ad-hoc tests according to the ANSI C63.18 recommended practice. The behavior of the devices during the tests was monitored using patient simulators/device testers specific for each device class. Electromagnetic interference cases were observed in three of 45 devices at a maximum distance of 5 cm. In two cases the interference caused malfunctions that may have clinical consequences for the patient. The authors' findings show that the use of these wireless local area network adapters can be considered reasonably safe, although interference may occur if they are operated at very close distance (<10 cm) to the medical devices.

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) to critical care medical devices has been reported by various groups. Previuos study demonstrated that infusion pumps are susceptible of false alarm buzzing and block of infusion, when exposed to various EMI sources. Aim of this paper is to investigate the changes in the risk of EMI from the estimates of our previous 2005 survey and to extend the EMI risk assessment to newer telecommunication products: DECT phones and WiFi terminals. With regards to GSM phones, compare to the results obtained in 2005, we observed a decrease in the rate of failure (from 58% to 30%). From our findings, the use of WiFi and DECT does not pose a real risk to infusion systems.

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