White Papers on Wi-Fi Mobility for Hospitals and Industrial Environments

Recognizing the increased importance of providing persistent wireless network connections on mobile devices, Laird Technologies has updated two white papers on Wi-Fi mobility. Both white papers center on the importance of effective roaming for reliable operation of client devices in challenging environments.

The first paper, Wi-Fi: The Importance of Mobility in Hospitals, focuses on persistent Wi-Fi connections for mobile medical devices in a hospital. The second paper, Wi-Fi: The Importance of Mobile in Industrial Environments, focuses on persistent Wi-Fi connections for mobile computers and other business-critical mobile devices that operate in industrial environments, such as a manufacturing plant, warehouse, or large retail store.

From a Wi-Fi perspective, mobility means maintaining a persistent connection while the Wi-Fi client switches, or roams, from one

Wi-Fi: The Importance of Mobility in Hospitals

infrastructure endpoint to another. While most applications on general-purpose computing devices do not require persistent connections, applications on medical devices and mobile computers require a constant connection. Persistent connections on a mobile device depend on fast and effective roaming for applications that are often critical for the health and safety of patients and the workflow of a hospital. Roaming is handled by Wi-Fi client radio software, and many Wi-Fi client radios, especially those designed for consumer-grade devices, handle roaming poorly. Suboptimal roaming can lead to application failures.

The white papers explain how roaming works and how roaming can be optimized to ensure the reliable operation of client devices that require persistent connections. Both white papers can be found here.