Implementation and Evaluation of a Tele-Audiology System on a 5G-Based Digital Health Testbed Using a 4G Radio Access Network

Experimental work in the context of the Fifth Generation and beyond networks and healthcare has gained significant traction over the past few years through the development of Fifth Generation-based digital health test networks, also called testbeds. This paper reports on the findings of the integration and testing of a tele-audiology application on a Fifth Generation-based digital health testbed being developed at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The Fifth Generation-based digital health testbed's core network was implemented using an open-source core network system called Open5GS. The radio access network uses a Neutrino Baicells Long Term Evolution base station. The TeamViewer application was integrated onto the testbed to simulate patient-audiologist video interaction and conduct remote tele-audiology tests. Network Quality of Service parameters such as upload and download speeds, packet jitter, network latency, and video bitrate were collected using nPerf, and user Quality of Experience was determined by observing the audio and video quality between the patient and audiologist sides. Observed network Quality of Service results were compared to those required for running TeamViewer by a one-sample t-test of statistical data analysis using IBM SPSS Statistics. The video quality analysis and the one-sample t-test showed that the testbed network could handle tele-audiology services using TeamViewer. These findings concluded that TeamViewer-powered tele-audiology services could be conducted on the Fifth-Generation mobile networks, even using Fourth-Generation radio access on a 5G-ready core network system.