Analysis and description of HOLTIN service provision for AECG monitoring in complex indoor environments

In this work, a novel ambulatory ECG monitoring device developed in-house called HOLTIN is analyzed when operating in complex indoor scenarios. The HOLTIN system is described, from the technological platform level to its functional model. In addition, by using in-house 3D ray launching simulation code, the wireless channel behavior, which enables ubiquitous operation, is performed. The effect of human body presence is taken into account by a novel simplified model embedded within the 3D Ray Launching code. Simulation as well as measurement results are presented, showing good agreement. These results may aid in the adequate deployment of this novel device to automate conventional medical processes, increasing the coverage radius and optimizing energy consumption.The authors wish to thank the support given under project ENEIDA TEC2010-21563-C02-01, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain

Characterization of the Spatial Distribution of the Electric Field Strength in Indoor Propagation at 2.45 GHz

Small-scale spatial variations of the electric field strength or “fast fading” are encountered in indoor environments, and are of particular concern for indoor wireless communication applications as well as for electromagnetic compatibility assessment. This thesis is motivated by the problem of electromagnetic interference with a critical-care medical equipment caused by fields radiated by portable electronic devices such as cell phones and tablet computers. Measurement and computer simulation of the electric field strength, in both controlled and real-world scenarios, are explored to estimate parameter values of statistical models for the fast fading in a region of interest inside a building. First, a method for measuring the dielectric constant of wall construction materials is developed for two reasons: little information available on electrical properties of such materials in the frequency range of interest, 2.4 GHz ISM band, and variations in material properties caused by different manufacturing processes employed by different manufacturers. The proposed technique, referred to as the parallel-path method, falls into the category of free-space methods and is shown to be more sensitive to the dielectric constant than free-space methods based on normal incidence only. Having determined the dielectric constant of gyproc slabs and of a wooden door, a controlled multipath environment is built inside an anechoic chamber. Two line-of-sight and a non-line-of-sight scenarios, each with about 4000 measurement points, are studied. We apply the Friedman’s goodness-of-fit test at 5% significance level to show that a ray-tracing technique based only on 3D geometrical optics is suitable for estimating the fast fading of the electromagnetic field at 2.45 GHz in a very controlled situation. Then the Anderson-Darling goodness-of-fit test, also at 5% significance level, is applied to show that in the vicinity of a transmitter the Ricean, Normal, Nakagami, and Weibull distributions can be equivalently used to represent the spatial fast fading for both line and non-line-of-sight scenarios. Furthermore, the effects of metal studs are shown to worsen not only point-by-point agreement between measurement and GO simulation, but also the agreement on the statistics of the fast fading in a 65 by 65 cm region. Another aspect of this thesis is the development of a new method for estimating the parameters of the Ricean probability density function. This new method is compared to the maximum-likelihood method, and is shown to provide accurate estimates with samples containing as few as 36 data points for regions within 2 m from a transmitter, and as few as 9 data points for regions farther away. This is a considerable improvement in term of computation time when compared to estimates based on approximately 4000 points, or even 200 data points. Together with GO simulations, this method reduces the initial and elaborated measurement approach to only a few simulated points and a statistical model. Finally, this methodology is extended and applied to real-world scenarios such as a long hallway and a conventional laboratory room. The agreement between measurement and GO simulation is not as good as that of the experiment conducted in a shielded anechoic chamber, but it is still reasonable, especially because the interior structures of walls such as metal studs are not modeled by the GO code. As for the statistical models used to describe the electric field strength variation in a region, it is shown that the Ricean, Normal, Nakagami, and the Weibull distributions can be employed. However, for the data collected in this work, the Normal distribution is the one that results in the worst fit to measured data for most of the cases. It is demonstrated that, even though diffracted rays are not taken into account, GO simulation allows for an accurate estimation of the parameters of a statistical model for the fast fading, for both controlled and most real-world scenarios, provided that the site geometry and electrical properties of walls, floor, and ceiling are known

Assessment of Radio Coverage in Indian Cities Using FDTD

Prediction of Radio coverage has seen a massive surge of research in recent years. In this paper we attempt to predict the radio coverage of an extremely complicated urban scenario using a very sophisticated mathematical model called Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD). FDTD technique helps us to model an urban area, with different obstacles, by numerically implementing the Maxwell’s equations. This enables us to find the electric and magnetic field strength of different regions. As the simulation is based on basic laws of electromagnetic theory, all the physical phenomena occurring in an urban space are taken into consideration. We use particular electromagnetic parameters such as, electric permittivity, magnetic permeability and electrical conductivity of the materials which form the obstacles. They are aided with the transmission data i.e Transmission power and frequency for deriving the radio power. The simulation is based on a 2 dimensional model of FDTD. This greatly increases our accuracy in complicated scenarios. This also helps us in finding the specific regions that are under very high exposure to radio signals and thereby accessing the risk of health hazards in such regions. In a last few decades, there has been a surge of research and novelty in prediction of radio power and radio coverage in different regions. The requirement of effective algorithms and proper platforms for simulations has been a prime driving cause. There are a number of models in place for determining radio power in a particular area. But the current tools are based on empirical and semi-empirical models for easier algorithms and short running time. These models have shown effective results in rural and semi-urban scenarios. But they seem to fail in extremely complicated urban scenarios, where all the obstacles must be accurately modelled. In these scenarios, we must take all possible physical phenomena, such as reflection, refraction, diffraction, transmissions and scattering, into consideration

Packet Loss in Terrestrial Wireless and Hybrid Networks

The presence of both a geostationary satellite link and a terrestrial local wireless link on the same path of a given network connection is becoming increasingly common, thanks to the popularity of the IEEE 802.11 protocol. The most common situation where a hybrid network comes into play is having a Wi-Fi link at the network edge and the satellite link somewhere in the network core. Example of scenarios where this can happen are ships or airplanes where Internet connection on board is provided through a Wi-Fi access point and a satellite link with a geostationary satellite; a small office located in remote or isolated area without cabled Internet access; a rescue team using a mobile ad hoc Wi-Fi network connected to the Internet or to a command centre through a mobile gateway using a satellite link. The serialisation of terrestrial and satellite wireless links is problematic from the point of view of a number of applications, be they based on video streaming, interactive audio or TCP. The reason is the combination of high latency, caused by the geostationary satellite link, and frequent, correlated packet losses caused by the local wireless terrestrial link. In fact, GEO satellites are placed in equatorial orbit at 36,000 km altitude, which takes the radio signal about 250 ms to travel up and down. Satellite systems exhibit low packet loss most of the time, with typical project constraints of 10−8 bit error rate 99% of the time, which translates into a packet error rate of 10−4, except for a few days a year. Wi-Fi links, on the other hand, have quite different characteristics. While the delay introduced by the MAC level is in the order of the milliseconds, and is consequently too small to affect most applications, its packet loss characteristics are generally far from negligible. In fact, multipath fading, interference and collisions affect most environments, causing correlated packet losses: this means that often more than one packet at a time is lost for a single fading even