Radio compatibility studies for medical body area network systems

Evolution in healthcare during the last two decades has had tremendous impact on people's lives, extending life expectancy and improving patient care. One of the reasons this happened is the introduction of Medical Body Area Network Systems (MBANSs), a technology enabling the measurement and transfer of vital patient information to specialists, leading to faster and more accurate medical treatment. Although today there are existing wireless MBANSs in the license-free frequency band of 2.4 GHz (industrial scientific and medical, ISM band), the estimated growth of MBANSs in large scale facilities, even for usage at patient homes, demands more and less crowded spectrum in a different frequency band. This requires regulation and standardization activities worldwide. In the European continent, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) are considering the 2360 - 2400 MHz and 2483.5 - 2500 MHz bands for MBANSs operation, which are very close to the ISM band currently in use. This will give the opportunity for easier adaptation of the already existing devices, since the changes in hardware would be small; however it also leads to new design challenges: the aforementioned frequency bands are already designated to other services and technologies, causing possible interference between these services and MBANSs. Compatibility studies need to done and arguments need to be considered to validate proper coexistence in these bands, before the final harmonization of MBANSs can be approved by ECC and ETSI. This report provides a number of compatibility studies that were done between MBANSs and LTE (mobile cellular networks), MSS (mobile satellite systems), RDSS (Galileo navigation systems) and LP-AMI (active medical implants). Most of these studies were included as contribution in the corresponding (draft) Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) Report. They are in general comprised of calculations, simulation of realistic use-cases and justified specification choices for the devices. As a result of the studies presented here, we can conclude that MBANSs designed for homes and ambulances experience serious compatibility problems in the band 2360-2400 MHz, due to LTE networks, while MBANSs designed for healthcare facilities experience problems in the band 2483.5-2500 MHz due to the other above mentioned technologies. This gives us indications for possible implementation of healthcare facility MBANSs in the first band and home/ambulance MBANSs in the latter one.