Suitability of Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) for Multimedia Data Transmission in Wireless Telemedicine Applications

Telemedicine is the process of using latest telecommunication and computer technology to enhance the performance of medicine, particularly in the area of delivery of medical care. Wireless telemedicine is a new and evolving area in telemedical and telecare systems. It involves the use of mobile communication and multimedia technologies and their integration for new mobile healthcare delivery systems. In wireless Telemedicine, broadband multimedia data which is a combination of video, audio and externally acquired images is transmitted. This is cumbersome in our conventional wireless systems due to the limitations such as Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and frequency selective fading. Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) mitigates these problems and it can be used effectively for wireless telemedicine applications. COFDM is the best choice for digital audio and video broadcasting i.e. for multimedia data traffic. It is particularly suited for obtaining reliable reception of signals affected by ISI and frequency selective fading and by this technique transmission of high data rates can be achieved. In this paper COFDM technique is proposed as more suitable one for the broadband wireless telemedicine applications. System performance for various modulation schemes has been investigated. The effects of multipath propagation, frequency selective fading and the various fading channels like AWGN and Rayleigh have also been included in the analysis. Performance of COFDM scheme is compared with the uncoded OFDM strategy. Key Words : OFDM, COFDM, ISI, FFT, IFFT.