Improved-TOPSIS based handover scheme for telemedicine service using heterogeneous wireless networks

Abstract

Existing telemedicine systems that rely on single telecommunication network are unable to guarantee the user is always connected to healthcare professionals anywhere and anytime. The use of heterogeneous wireless networks can overcome this issue. However, the existing handover schemes are not efficient enough for telemedicine application. This is because the preference of telemedicine user might change based on the patient health conditions. In critical condition, the user preference might be biased toward the network QoS to optimize the quality of real-time telemedicine services. Conversely, the user would prefer the low cost network for transmitting the recorded health data to hospital server during non-critical situation. In this paper, an Improved Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (I-TOPSIS) handover scheme is proposed for telemedicine services using heterogeneous wireless network. The proposed handover scheme is aware of patient health condition as well as user preference. It acts as user-preference based handover scheme and QoS based handover scheme during non-critical and critical condition, respectively. It overcomes the imperfections of the existing handover schemes in supporting telemedicine services.