Modeling and Analysis of a Telesurgery Environment Considering a 5G Network

Abstract

Over the past few years, surgeries performed by robots have increased considerably. For telesurgery (or remote surgery) to be performed satisfactorily, synchrony between the robot and the communication link is essential. However, no studies analytically evaluate these remote surgery environments when such surgeries are performed between two hospitals. The main objective of this work is to model a telesurgery environment, allowing metrics such as availability and reliability to be obtained.The results presented in this paper can help the maintenance team (or medical team) to better plan the infrastructure used in telesurgery and, consequently, avoid failures that could endanger the lives of patients. The results revealed that the shortest downtime occurs when performing surgery in the same hospital, with a system inoperable for 10,6 hours annually. For telesurgery between two hospitals connected by 5G, the reliability index was 98.8891%, with a 99,99% probability of message delivery in just 0,8 seconds.