The integration of ad hoc sensor and cellular networks
for multi-class data transmission
Fei Hu
a,
*
, Sunil Kumar
b
a
Computer Engineering, RIT, 83 Lomb memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623-5603, United States
b
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, P.O. Box 5720, Potsdam, NY 13699-5720, United States
Received 30 March 2004; received in revised form 25 July 2004; accepted 16 August 2004
Available online 18 September 2004
Abstract
This paper targets mobile telemedicine applications that can be supported using third generation (3G) cellular net-
works, to provide highly flexible medical services. On the other hand, large-scale Ad hoc Sensor Networks (ASN), when
deployed among mobile patients who may carry different kinds of micro-sensors to measure ECG, blood pressure, basal
temperature or other physiological data, can provide a dynamic data query architecture to allow the medical specialists
to monitor patients at any place. So far very little research has been conducted to explore the possibility of integrating
ASN with mobile telemedicine. In this paper: 1. we suggest an integrated architecture that takes advantage of the low
cost mobile sensor networks and 3G cellular networks to support multimedia medical calls with differentiated Quality-
of-Service (QoS) requirements. 2. We propose a low-energy, distributed, concentric-zone-based data query mechanism
that has the advantages of both proactive and reactive ad hoc routing algorithms to collect medical results from large-
scale mobile patients for medical specialists who use cellular network to report patient data to the medical center. 3. In
order to minimize the ambulance wireless call-dropping rate, we adopt accurate resource reservation call admission con-
trol (CAC) scheme to allocate the necessary bandwidth in the destination cell. 4. In order to meet the QoS requirements
of patientsÕ wireless calls, we use dynamic guard channel CAC scheme to keep their handoff-call dropping rate below a
certain threshold. We evaluate the validity of our schemes through simulations and analyze their performance. Our
results clearly indicate the efficiency of the proposed CAC and sensor network query algorithms to meet the multimedia
telemedicine QoS requirements.
Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Mobile telemedicine; Ad hoc network; Sensor network; Data query; Third-generation (3G) wireless networks; Cellular
network; Call Admission Control (CAC); Quality-of-service (QoS)
1570-8705/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2004.08.014
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 585 2446019.
E-mail addresses: fei.hu@ieee.org (F. Hu), fxheec@rit.edu (F. Hu), skumar@clarkson.edu (S. Kumar).
Ad Hoc Networks 4 (2006) 254–282
www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc