E-Health: Value Proposition and Technologies Enabling Collaborative Healthcare

E-health, enabled by ubiquitous computing and communication technologies, is facilitating a fundamental shift in the age old praxis of healthcare. It is revolutionizing healthcare in the 21st century in much the same way as the arrival of modern medicine and vaccines did in the 19th century. E-health lies at the intersection of diverse disciplines including healthcare, computer science, information systems, economics, and political science. The broad impact of E-health on diverse domains, complexity of supporting technologies, and the dizzying interplay of theories bridging multiple disciplines creates a rich problem space for information system researchers and calls on to conduct cross-disciplinary research. In the current paper we present salient characteristics of e-health and discuss its value proposition. The value proposition of e-health presents the entire range of processes supporting the healthcare sector. We also present research opportunities as e-health takes center stage in the delivery of healthcare

Antenna Design for 5G and Beyond

With the rapid evolution of the wireless communications, fifth-generation (5G) communication has received much attention from both academia and industry, with many reported efforts and research outputs and significant improvements in different aspects, such as data rate speed and resolution, mobility, latency, etc. In some countries, the commercialization of 5G communication has already started as well as initial research of beyond technologies such as 6G.MIMO technology with multiple antennas is a promising technology to obtain the requirements of 5G/6G communications. It can significantly enhance the system capacity and resist multipath fading, and has become a hot spot in the field of wireless communications. This technology is a key component and probably the most established to truly reach the promised transfer data rates of future communication systems. In MIMO systems, multiple antennas are deployed at both the transmitter and receiver sides. The greater number of antennas can make the system more resistant to intentional jamming and interference. Massive MIMO with an especially high number of antennas can reduce energy consumption by targeting signals to individual users utilizing beamforming.Apart from sub-6 GHz frequency bands, 5G/6G devices are also expected to cover millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) spectra. However, moving to higher bands will bring new challenges and will certainly require careful consideration of the antenna design for smart devices. Compact antennas arranged as conformal, planar, and linear arrays can be employed at different portions of base stations and user equipment to form phased arrays with high gain and directional radiation beams. The objective of this Special Issue is to cover all aspects of antenna designs used in existing or future wireless communication systems. The aim is to highlight recent advances, current trends, and possible future developments of 5G/6G antennas

Detection of Signals in MC–CDMA Using a Novel Iterative Block Decision Feedback Equalizer

This paper presents a technique to mitigate multiple access interference (MAI) in multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) wireless communications systems. Although under normal circumstances the MC-CDMA system can achieve high spectral efficiency and resistance towards inter symbol interference (ISI) however when exposed to substantial nonlinear distortion the issue of MAI manifests. Such distortion results when the power amplifiers are driven into saturation or when the transmit signal experiences extreme adverse channel conditions. The proposed technique uses a modified iterative block decision feedback equalizer (IB-DFE) that uses a minimal mean square error (MMSE) receiver in the feed-forward path to nullify the residual interference from the IB-DFE receiver. The received signal is re-filtered in an iterative process to significantly improve the MC-CDMA system’s performance. The effectiveness of the proposed modified IB-DFE technique in MC-CDMA systems has been analysed under various harsh nonlinear conditions, and the results of this analysis presented here confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique to outperform conventional methodologies in terms of the bit error rate (BER) and lesser computational complexity