Reliable Patient Data Transmission in Indoor Optical Wireless Healthcare Systems

Abstract

The rapid growth in wireless communication technologies has been providing abundant benefits to human well-being. The primary goal of hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory services, and medical test centers is to outdo the quality of the healthcare service. Upcoming technologies aid in improving the healthcare standard, ease patients with timely and optimal medical assistance. The implementation of Radio Frequency (RF) technology in biomedical data transmission is often disturbed by Electromagnetic Interference (EMI). Even though the flexibility and mobility of RF-based healthcare gadgets have gained much attraction, the long-term exposure of high- frequency radiation causes damage to expensive medical equipment and even harmful to human’s health. In addition, it suffers from a lack of precision caused by interference and noise. The power consumption, interference with other wireless networks, security, and are some of the critical issues that need to be resolved. Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) technology has been proposed as a potential alternative to existing RF-based wireless healthcare communication systems to overcome RF hazards and increasing the reliability of the healthcare data transmission systems by using the light spectrum as its communication medium. The motivation of the current dissertation is to investigate efficient and reliable optical-based transmission schemes for patient healthcare data and the performance of mobility support in indoor optical healthcare systems. The first chapter introduces challenging issues in RF healthcare systems followed by the OWC technology and its subsets including Visible Light Communication (VLC), Optical Camera Communication (OCC), and Infrared (IR). Then, the OWC based healthcare systems known as optical healthcare systems are discussed. The second chapter of the dissertation particularizes on single patient biomedical data transmission schemes in an OWC link. The third chapter investigates the multiple patient data transmission schemes in IR and VLC links. The fourth chapter then investigates the patient mobility support in an optical body area network (OBAN) using diffused optical links. The fifth chapter investigates the real-time applications of the biomedical signals in controlling smart home devices in VLC. The sixth chapter concludes the findings in the dissertation. The focus of the studies discussed in the second chapter is to establish an optical link for transmitting the Electroencephalography (EEG) biomedical signal using a selection combining technique. The selection combining scheme is implemented at the receiver by utilizing the three Photodiodes (PDs) equipped with individual color sensors. The color modulation, on the other hand, is presented, using the OCC link for transmitting human vital signs. The color modulation scheme assigns colors to each vital sign data. The color modulated data is transmitted based on the red, green, and blue (RGB) color combinations. The Optical-Extra Body Communication (OEBC) system is experimented through a RGB LED array which acts as a coordinator to gather the vital sign information from the sensor nodes and transmit through an optical channel, while an Android-based smartphone camera is used as the receiver. The third chapter then investigates the multiple patient healthcare data transmission scheme using Periodic Data Transmission (PDT) and Coded Polarization Shift Keying (CPoLSK) techniques using either visible light or invisible light such as IR medium. The main focus of this chapter is to mitigate the interference effect in a multi-patient environment. The fourth chapter proposes reliable patient mobility support in the OBAN system using diffused optical links. The VLC-based mobility system employs three different mobility scenarios. The analytical expressions for the diffused optical reflections for the mobility scenarios are derived and validated with experiments. The performance of the OBAN mobility model is more efficient compared with the previous reports. The fifth chapter investigates the applications of the human biomedical signals in the form of Human-Computer Interface (HCI) systems. An experimental Electrooculography (EOG) signal based device control in a smart home environment via a VLC link is presented. The accuracy of the proposed EOG based assistive system is demonstrated using a digital door lock operation. The last chapter concludes and summarizes the reliable and efficient performance improvements for the optical healthcare systems discussed in the previous chapters. The future scope of the optical-based biomedical signals transmission and healthcare status monitoring is also elaborated in the conclusion.