Secured wireless medical data transmission using modified elliptic curve cryptography

Abstract

With the widespread availability of cost effective wireless devices, the usage of such devices for the monitoring a patient's vital parameters have become ubiquitous. The use of such devices has given rise to Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASNs) that can enable a healthcare professional to remotely monitor an individual, thereby eliminating costly trips to the hospital. However, since WBASNs carry sensitive patient information, maintaining security is paramount. Public Key Cryptography (PKC) provides robust security than other cryptographic systems. However, PKC requires a substantial computational overhead to be effective which renders them unsuitable for low powered devices used in WBASNs. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provides a computationally low overhead for achieving robust security. In this paper we define and propose a Modified Elliptic Curve Cryptography (MECC) technique for use in WBASNs. We also propose to use this method for the secure transmission of data to be used for the wireless monitoring of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease in an indoor environment such as the patient's residence or a hospice. Our system would continuously monitor a patient in real time and detect events that generally precede a fall or a Freezing of Gait (FoG).

Edge computing in smart health care systems: Review, challenges, and research directions

“…Lin et al 44 Boneh-Franklin Identity based Energy efficient encryption For 50 attributes, 11 MB overhead encryption (IBE) and 1000 seconds time cost Ghosh et al 76 Modified elliptic curve Energy efficient encryption Marginal amount of overhead cryptography (MECC) Sun et al 100 Fully homomorphic Energy efficient and low Their scheme has lower implementation encryption scheme (FHE) latency encryption time than a comparable scheme with the same security parameter 100,101 . In their large scale medical smart cities architecture proposal, Sun et al 100 reduce the number of ciphertexts sent back to a receiver, which is an energy efficient revision to an existing scheme using FHE.…”

Implementing encryption with Enhanced Mobility Aware Routing Protocol for Bluetooth network

“…But, PKC provides high computational overhead and is, therefore, unsuitable to be used in low power Networks like Wireless Sensor networks and similar networks like Bluetooth Scatternet [3]. Also, since Bluetooth networks have low memory available for computation, it becomes a hurdle for the implementation of PKC.…”

“…However, if we use Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) we would easily overcome the problems posed here because ECC provides a smaller key size, less computation, more compact signature and is more cost effective in comparison to RSA, the most popular PKC algorithm. [3] [7] In general it can be seen that ECC provides the same level of security as RSA on one sixth of the computational effort. For example, the ECC with public key of size 256 bits provides security as that of 3072 bit RSA.…”

“…Thus, we can say that both the algorithms are similar because multiplication is a form of repeated addition. [3] Let us try to understand the idea of ECC. We considering a very large fmite set of points in a plane denoted by E. Now, we define group operator on this set and denote it by the symbol '+'.…”

“…This makes ECC a perfect choice compared to other PKC schemes such as RSA. In [3] the author prefers ECC for secured medical data transmission in wireless network. The same thing IS applicable in [2] for Wireless Sensor Network also.…”