MEDICAL DEVICE PERFORMANCE IN IEEE 802.11 NETWORKS - Evaluating IEEE P11073.1.1 Use Case Scenarios in Wireless LANs

Abstract

We study in this paper use of IEEE 802.11 wireless technologies for medical devices. The simulated use cases are derived from the ones specified in IEEE P11703.1.1 document. We consider the use cases where a WLAN using IEEE 802.11 is providing connectivity to medical, voice (VoIP) and IT applications simultaneously. This use case is interesting to hospitals because it provides potential cost savings. We model IEEE 802.11e QoS features and we use a wireless channel model with high and stable SNR to observe MAC protocol behavior. Our results indicate that QoS of medical and VoIP devices is met when they operate in dedicated channels, that is, without any IT and in good channel conditions. The inclusion of background IT load, affects QoS of both medical devices and VoIP. We quantify the performance improvement for medical devices when using IEEE 802.11 voice category and compare it with using best-effort category. The power consumption of wireless devices is not considered in this work.