Hybrid Satellite - Wireless Sensor Networks Architecture for Telemedicine Applications in the Context of Emergency Satellite Communications in Ku/Ka/Q/V Bands

Thanks to the facilities offered by telecommunications, telemedicine today allows physicians and clinicians to access, monitor and diagnose patients remotely. Telemedicine includes several applications such as remote monitoring of chronically ill patients, monitoring people in their everyday lives to provide early detection and intervention for various types of diseases, computer-assisted physical rehabilitation in ambulatory settings, and assisted living for the elderly at home, as well as remote monitoring of injured people in a postdisaster situation. These new applications require a reliable, wireless communication link between the devices implanted in the patient’s skin and a clinician. In this article, this issue is discussed and a list of performance criteria for the different communication links used are addressed, especially focusing on the satellite link. Then an adaptive air interface which is designed to meet the performance constraints of bidirectional satellite communication links in an emergency situation in Ku/Ka/Q/V bands where when strong channel impairments occur is described and analysed. Received on 28 February 2014; accepted on 20 December 2014; published on 28 December 2014