Quality of Service in Wireless Technologies for mHealth Service Providing

Wireless communication technologies are an essential part of the broadband infrastructure of countries. The advantages of the installation of such networks made them very attractive to deploy broadband services in regions where wired technologies do not provide coverage. These technologies have been very successful alternative mainly in developing countries and particularly to support remote health services. Additionally, the unceasing development of mobile applications, most of them using smartphones, is changing the way medical care services are provided. The use of wireless technologies is improving the operating way of health care services and the conditions for the users to receive them. Ability of wireless technologies to transmit differentiated services is essential for the deployment of networks for mHealth applications. The efficient operation of such networks requires identifying requirements of real-time applications such as biomedical signal transmission, and requirements of

store and forward

applications such as access to EMR (Electronic Medical Record). In the first case it is necessary to assign a high priority to the transmission, but also to meet strict parameters of Quality of Service (QoS) such as delay, delay variation and packet loss rate. In the second case the QoS requirements for transmission are less strict. This chapter presents an overview of the QoS mechanisms offered by current and future wireless mobile and wired IP technologies. The defined technical requirements of quality of service for the main mHealth applications are also presented. Finally a review of the capabilities of 4G technologies to support future mHealth applications is presented.