The New Nation - Internet Edition

Md. Habib-ur-Rahman Mollah

As a broadband wireless access (BWA) technology, WiMAX is able to provide ubiquitous internet access allowing end users to be connected to the internet independently of their location. Additionally, it also contributes for decreasing the digital divide gap, by providing internet access to rural areas where the deployment of a wired access solution will not be economically feasible for the telecommunication operators. WiMAX technology plays a crucial role such as: Telemedicine.

E-health is one of the areas where WiMAX technologies can substantially contribute to improve the daily activities and thus enhance the quality of life. Today a large number of activities are carried out with limited success, unnecessary costs and human difficulties because of the impossibility to exchange real time information between different elements of the chain that are not at fixed locations.

Remote Diagnosis is one of the possible cases where Mobile WiMAX plays an important role. For instance, a doctor is on duty on an ambulance and is called to intervene in a city street where a car accident occurred. The ambulance is equipped with a portable ultrasound device, connected to a notebook and to the hospital through a Mobile WiMAX channel. The doctor finds a laying man who might have internal injuries. To allow the fastest possible intervention, he charges the patient on the ambulance and, while going to the hospital, takes some images with the portable ultrasound and sends them via Mobile WiMAX to the hospital, where the surgery is being prepared He also sets-up a videoconference session with the surgeon at the hospital to inform him about the patient health condition and discuss the treatment options. This scenario is illustrated in Following Figure.

Besides the Remote Diagnosis scenario, Mobile WiMAX is also important for other Telemedicine applications such as Remote Follow-up, Remote Monitoring and Remote Assistance.

The Telemedicine scenario requires real time services and applications such as voice and video over IP in a mobility environment to support real time communication in case of emergency.

WiMax technology and its potential advancements are recently realized. Using WiMax technology broadband access can be provided to more rural and urban areas where internet can not be provided by other sources like fiber optics or by other regular telephonic cables. There are so many plus points of this technology out of which one is range, it ranges starts from minimum 30 miles, if we look in past, about 30 feet wireless connectivity is provided by Wifi technology.

WiMax range depends upon connectivity, if the connection is with Line of Sight (LoS) it can increase from up to 75 miles. WiMAX offers a solution called "Last mile" it can be used as alternative of cable and DSL internet access.