A seamless wireless network switching tunnel for ubiquitous healthcare environment

Abstract

A hospital's mobile nursing cart can collect clinical data via Wi-Fi networks and save data in the server side. This service not only provides better medical care, but also enhances staff productivity. However, the coverage of Wi-Fi is limited and signal dead ends will result in wireless disconnection. This problem can be solved by switching between Wi-Fi and 3G. The physical connection must be disconnected and be reconnected again. Therefore, it is interesting to design a mechanism to keep the physical connection continuous. This research designs a Stream Control Transmission Protocol Tunnel (SCTP-Tunnel) middleware. This middleware can be used to build a tunnel between client and server sides such that the SCTP packets can carry the TCP packets and solve the problem of disconnection caused by the one-to-one TCP. The proposed SCTP-Tunnel is compatible with IPv4 and IPv6 and can be adopted without modifying the applications. This design utilizes the SCPT packet acknowledge and multi-homing mechanisms to achieve network fault tolerance. It is feasible to provide a tunnel service via the SCTP-Tunnel and connect to service indirectly without changing the original system architecture to approach the Wi-Fi and 3G switching seamlessly. Such a service will also provide quality long-term healthcare services in the healthcare enterprise.