# Exploitation of Emerging Technologies and Advanced Networks for a Smart Healthcare System
## 4 Emerging Technologies
### Networking
#### 4.1.3 Fiber and Wireless Technologies (Fi-Wi)  
A wired infrastructure of optical fibers can be used alongside the use of wireless infrastructure in a medical center or a hospital. Optical fibers are very thick, flexible, and transparent fibers from drawing glass or plastic in such a way to support light transmission between their two ends. Hence, optical fibers allow transmission over longer distances at very high bandwidths, supporting higher data transmission than conventional electrical cables. Optical fibers can be used instead of traditional metal wires if reliability and high data rate are necessary. In optical fiber networks, the signals travel with less loss and without electromagnetic interference, which is a common problem in wired networks. There are two types of fiber optic cables: multimode and single-mode. Multimode fiber is capable of carrying multiple light rays (modes) at the same time as it has varying optical properties at the core. Single-mode fiber has a much smaller core size, and it has a single light path and can travel much longer distances of up to 100 km. Multimode optical fiber can readily transmit high bandwidth data over long distances. A typical bandwidth-distance product for multimode fiber is 500 MHz/km, thus a 500 m tether can transmit 1 GHz. Signal losses over 500 m are negligible as the bandwidth is limited by dispersion of signals. On the other hand, lightweight copper cable has very high losses at high frequencies. Twisted pair optimized for high data rates can transmit 500 MHz over only 100 m [35]. Potentially, as the design of advanced communication systems focuses on ultra-responsive connectivity, the convergence of both optical fiber and wireless technologies (Fi-Wi) could, possibly, play an important role to unveil a completely new world in the healthcare industry, as well. A well-promising converged Fi-Wi scheme is the analog Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) fronthaul that enables an analog radio frequency or intermediate frequency signal to be propagated over fiber and wireless fronthaul communication links [36]. Figure 3: Wireless Sensor Networks. Fi-Wi is a useful and powerful technology that can help doctors and medical staff to examine and diagnose patients' diseases in a better way, as they provide clearer endoscopic imaging. It is worth noting that many patients owe their lives today thanks to fiber-optic endoscopes. Of course, optical fibers are not only vital in endoscopes, but can also be used to transmit light to tissue regions of interest in such a way as to either illuminate the tissue so that it can be inspected or to cut it directly or to remove it. Therefore, fiber optics can be widely used both as laser delivery detectors and as imaging conductors in optical coherence tomography [37]. Furthermore, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) have application on the branch of medicine, and more specifically, in a hospital or a medical center. WLAN is a physical network which provides communication without the use of cables (no wired). WLAN services include Wi-Fi 802.11, Bluetooth, LoRa, ZigBee, or other futuristic technologies and protocols. An 802.11/Wi-Fi network supports medical services, such as data, voice, and video transmission across clinical and patients' applications and devices. Moreover, a layered Wi-Fi architecture provides dedicated channel use for specific Wi-Fi enabled services, and thus, it is vital for healthcare wireless environments, especially when it is needed for transmission of wireless signals from medical devices. Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11 ax, builds and improves on the 802.11 ac standard. Its nominal data rates are increased up to 9.6 Gbps which means 1.25 times faster than the previous standard. Moreover, it offers more efficient data management for faster speeds and supports both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies for faster Internet across both frequency channels.