Diffuse IR-Optical Wireless System Demonstration for Mobile Patient Monitoring in Hospitals

Patient monitoring in the hospitals is very critical and important for medical treatment during both cure and recovery. Modern hospitals usually implies the facility of mobile patient monitoring based on radio frequency technology, however the radio frequency can experience electromagnetic interference (EMI) with sophisticated medical equipment, which may cause health risk to the patient. We experimentally demonstrate a solution for mobile patient monitoring based on diffuse infra-red (IR) optical wireless technology. In order to avoid background ambient light interference generated by florescent lamps, bipolar signalling is successfully exploited. The data rate of 10 Mbit/s with NRZ-AMI (bipolar signalling) is achieved with BER < 10(-5).