11 Healthcare IoT
525
2. Virtual sensors: Virtual sensors use software and mobile applications to gain
patient’s health and contextual data from the environment. A virtual sensor
includes many categories such as remote monitoring, remote consultation,
diagnostic, patient health record, nutrition, and medical reference applications.
11.4.2 Network Layer
There is a need to enable multi-protocol data communication technology between
devices at the edge as well as gateways, fog nodes, and the cloud servers. As
discussed in the third chapter of this book, common groups of IoT network
technology are as follows:
• Body area network (BAN) and personal area network (PAN): The scale of this
network is a few meters. This network is used to connect the edge nodes (e.g.,
sensors, actuators, devices, control systems, and assets) to gateways and fog
nodes. BAN/PANs are usually wireless and more constrained by antenna distance
(and sometimes battery life) than LANs. A notable example of BAN/PAN is the
Bluetooth technology, mostly used for connecting wearable devices to portable
devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.
• Home area network (HAN): The scale of this network is a few tens of meters. At
this scale, common wireless technologies for IoT include ZigBee and Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE).
• Field area network (FAN): The scale of this “open space” network is several tens
of meters to several hundred meters. FAN typically refers to an outdoor area
larger than a single group of house units. 6LoWPAN is one of the most wellknown technologies for FAN.
• Local area networks (LAN): The scale of this network is up to 100 m. This term
is very common in networking, and it is therefore also commonly used in the IoT
space when standard networking technologies (such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi) are
used.
• Metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide-area networks (WAN): The scale
of MAN is up to a few kilometers and the scale of WAN is more than a
few kilometers. These networks provide connectivity for data and control flow
between the IoT gateway (or fog nodes) and the cloud. WANs can be wired
(e.g., using fiber-optic cable) or wireless such as 3G/4G mobile networks or even
satellite networks. It should be noted that with the introduction of low-power
wide-area network (LPWAN) such as NB-IoT and LoRa, there is a possibility
to directly connect endpoint IoT devices (without any gateway) to cloud servers
without the need to use 3G or Wi-Fi.
In this context, there is a vast variety of protocols. Figures 11.3 and 11.4 show
the IoT e-Health protocol stack. Note that the selection of the best connectivity and
the communication protocol depends on the application and the specific use-case
525
2. Virtual sensors: Virtual sensors use software and mobile applications to gain
patient’s health and contextual data from the environment. A virtual sensor
includes many categories such as remote monitoring, remote consultation,
diagnostic, patient health record, nutrition, and medical reference applications.
11.4.2 Network Layer
There is a need to enable multi-protocol data communication technology between
devices at the edge as well as gateways, fog nodes, and the cloud servers. As
discussed in the third chapter of this book, common groups of IoT network
technology are as follows:
• Body area network (BAN) and personal area network (PAN): The scale of this
network is a few meters. This network is used to connect the edge nodes (e.g.,
sensors, actuators, devices, control systems, and assets) to gateways and fog
nodes. BAN/PANs are usually wireless and more constrained by antenna distance
(and sometimes battery life) than LANs. A notable example of BAN/PAN is the
Bluetooth technology, mostly used for connecting wearable devices to portable
devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.
• Home area network (HAN): The scale of this network is a few tens of meters. At
this scale, common wireless technologies for IoT include ZigBee and Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE).
• Field area network (FAN): The scale of this “open space” network is several tens
of meters to several hundred meters. FAN typically refers to an outdoor area
larger than a single group of house units. 6LoWPAN is one of the most wellknown technologies for FAN.
• Local area networks (LAN): The scale of this network is up to 100 m. This term
is very common in networking, and it is therefore also commonly used in the IoT
space when standard networking technologies (such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi) are
used.
• Metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide-area networks (WAN): The scale
of MAN is up to a few kilometers and the scale of WAN is more than a
few kilometers. These networks provide connectivity for data and control flow
between the IoT gateway (or fog nodes) and the cloud. WANs can be wired
(e.g., using fiber-optic cable) or wireless such as 3G/4G mobile networks or even
satellite networks. It should be noted that with the introduction of low-power
wide-area network (LPWAN) such as NB-IoT and LoRa, there is a possibility
to directly connect endpoint IoT devices (without any gateway) to cloud servers
without the need to use 3G or Wi-Fi.
In this context, there is a vast variety of protocols. Figures 11.3 and 11.4 show
the IoT e-Health protocol stack. Note that the selection of the best connectivity and
the communication protocol depends on the application and the specific use-case