Hospital Environment Scenarios using WLAN over OPNET Simulation Tool

Abstract

For the past ten years, heterogeneous networks wired and wireless had tended to integrate seamlessly, offering effective and reliable service for medical operations. One of the problems encountered by network practitioners is the seamless integration of network components into healthcare delivery. As a multiplexing hospital model, the implementation certainly presents some challenges. The major technical and performance issues involve are as following. The operating parameters should keep aligned to the Quality of Service (QoS) requirement throughout simulation. Bandwidth utilisation of wireless networking is a challenging issue for real-time multimedia transmission. IEEE 802.11 provides relatively lower data rate than wired networks, thus the developer tends to adopt a more compromised solution: either reduce the file size or compress the image packets. Communication performance that varies constantly with the impact of signal strength, traffic load and interference. As stated radio signal senses as a curve and attenuates greatly while metallic object and microwave exist within the active range. To ensure devices do not interfere with other electronic equipments (e.g. heart monitors), assert wireless spectrum has to be managed appropriately. This research paper aims to develop a generic hospital network scenarios using Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) over OPNET Simulation, to evaluate the performance of the integrated network scenario for Intensive Care Units (ICU). This research makes use of computer simulation and discusses various aspects of the network design, so as to discover the performance behaviour pertaining to effect of traffic type, traffic load and network size. In the ICU scenario, the performance of video conference degrades with network size, thus, a QoS-enabled device is recommended to reduce the packet delay and data loss. IEEE 802.11a suits in hospital environment because it mitigates interference on the 2.4GHz band where most wireless devices operate. Experiment examines the effect of signal strength in WLAN. It is convinced that -88dBm is the best signal strength threshold. Although 802.11a generates slightly lower throughput than 802.11g, this issues can be addressed by placing more APs in the service area. It is convinced that 802.11a suits the hospital environments, because it mitigates interference on the popular 2.4GHz band where most wireless devices operate. It is important for medical devices which require future upgrade and Bluetooth deployment.