Implementation and Operational Analysis of an Interactive Intensive Care Unit within a Smart Health Context

Abstract

In the context of hospital management and operation, Intensive Care Units (ICU) are one of the most challenging in terms of time responsiveness and criticality, in which adequate resource management and signal processing play a key role in overall system performance. In this work, a context aware Intensive Care Unit is implemented and analyzed to provide scalable signal acquisition capabilities, as well as to provide tracking and access control. Wireless channel analysis is performed by means of hybrid optimized 3D Ray Launching deterministic simulation to assess potential interference impact as well as to provide required coverage/capacity thresholds for employed transceivers. Wireless system operation within the ICU scenario, considering conventional transceiver operation, is feasible in terms of quality of service for the complete scenario. Extensive measurements of overall interference levels have also been carried out, enabling subsequent adequate coverage/capacity estimations, for a set of Zigbee based nodes. Real system operation has been tested, with ad-hoc designed Zigbee wireless motes, employing lightweight communication protocols to minimize energy and bandwidth usage. An ICU information gathering application and software architecture for Visitor Access Control has been implemented, providing monitoring of the Boxes external doors and the identification of visitors via a RFID system. The results enable a solution to provide ICU access control and tracking capabilities previously not exploited, providing a step forward in the implementation of a Smart Health framework.

A Radio Channel Model for D2D Communications Blocked by Single Trees in Forest Environments

“…In the last few decades, Wireless Sensor Networks have become indubitably one of the most important technologies for both development and investigation in various fields as health care [1], agriculture [2], domestic monitoring [3], and means of land transport [4], among others. However, although in most of applications, numerous sensor nodes are distributed around a wide geographical area while the reliability of the wireless communication in terms of network coverage is a crucial requirement, some environments can be tough and make it hard to achieve the desired communication between nodes; thus resulting in a non-responsive application.…”

Deterministic Propagation Modeling for Intelligent Vehicle Communication in Smart Cities

“…The detailed operating mode of the algorithm has been previously published in [ 24 ]. It has also been validated in large indoor environments [ 25 ], intra-vehicle [ 26 ] and transportation systems [ 19 , 27 , 28 ]. The principle of the algorithm is that the complete 3D scenario is divided into a fixed number of different cuboids sizes.…”

Integration of Autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks in Academic School Gardens

“…For the present study, the 3D Ray Launching technique will provide the RF power distribution for the whole 3D simulated scenario. This simulation tool has been broadly used and validated in both indoor and outdoor large scenarios [ 39 , 40 ]. It has also been tested satisfactorily for smart viticultural management [ 41 ].…”