A Mobile Patient Monitoring System (MPMS) acquires patient's biosignals and transmits them using wireless network connection to the decision-making module or healthcare professional for the assessment of patient's condition. A variety of wireless network technologies such as wireless personal area networks (e.g., Bluetooth), mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET), and infrastructure-based networks (e.g., WLAN and cellular networks) are in practice for biosignals delivery. The wireless network quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of biosignals delivery are mainly specified in terms of required bandwidth, acceptable delay, and tolerable error rate. An important research challenge in the MPMS is how to satisfy QoS requirements of biosignals delivery in the environment characterized by patient mobility, deployment of multiple wireless network technologies, and variable QoS characteristics of the wireless networks. QoS requirements are mainly application specific, while available QoS is largely dependent on QoS provided by wireless network in use. QoS provisioning refers to providing support for improving QoS experience of networked applications. In resource poor conditions, application adaptation may also be required to make maximum use of available wireless network QoS. This survey paper presents a survey of recent developments in the area of QoS provisioning for MPMS. In particular, our contributions are as follows: (1) overview of wireless networks and network QoS requirements of biosignals delivery; (2) survey of wireless networks' QoS performance evaluation for the transmission of biosignals; and (3) survey of QoS provisioning mechanisms for biosignals delivery in MPMS. We also propose integrating end-to-end QoS monitoring and QoS provisioning strategies in a mobile patient monitoring system infrastructure to support optimal delivery of biosignals to the healthcare professionals.
Keywords: Biosignals compression; Cross-layer scheduling; Mobile patient monitoring system; QoS mapping; Quality of service; Service differentiation; Vertical handover.