Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0001-8422-6266

Date of Award

17-8-2025

Document Type

Thesis

School

School of Computing

Programme

Ph.D.-Doctoral of Philosophy

First Advisor

Dr.V.Kalaichelvi

Keywords

Healthcare, Lightweight Algorithm, Security, Data Integrity, Confidentiality, WBAN, Medical Cyber Physical Systems, Computation Time, Communication Cost

Abstract

Healthcare involves detecting symptoms, diagnosing conditions and giving treatment to patients. It is one of the fundamental human rights, and it might be difficult to provide healthcare to those with chronic illnesses, elderly people with disabilities and those under distant observation. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide.

According to the prediction, CVD-related causes such as heart attacks and strokes, could result in 23.3 million deaths by 2030. In addition, the number of people with diabetes will reach 246 million; thereby, the prevalence of CVD patients and diabetics will rise. The incredible expansion of wireless health monitoring devices and other technologies to address this issue has attracted global attention.

Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MCPS) gather physiological signals from the patient and send them for processing by integrating sensors, medical equipment and communication devices. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) are vital to medical cyber-physical systems that continuously monitor patients. It keeps an unrestricted eye on patients' daily lives and medical conditions at all times and places.

Body area networks have several advantages, but security and privacy remain a significant problem. Medical sensors placed on patients’ body measure their health and transmit the information to a physician or healthcare professional. However, during this communication process, the sensors are vulnerable to attack. An adversary can intercept data from wireless channels and alter the outcomes. Patient data are more sensitive; improper access or alteration of the results can result in humiliation, inappropriate care, strained relationships or even loss of employment. This study suggests using cryptographic techniques to monitor the patient’s health as they meet security standards and aid in overcoming the above-said obstacles. Authentication, data integrity and confidentiality are required to achieve security.

The human body is equipped with temperature, pulse oximeter and Electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors to gather physiological data, including heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature and ECG signals. Security can be implemented in three levels to protect the data: Device level, Communication level and Storage level. Providing Security at the device level such as sensors, IoT devices, etc., is known as device security. Communication security is the prevention of unauthorized access to transmitted data. Protecting data stored on an external cloud or internal medical server is known as storage security.

The present study aims to design and develop a system for encryption of medical data at the device and communication level, which satisfies the security requirements such as Confidentiality, Integrity and Authentication. Initially, a lightweight cryptographic algorithm is proposed to achieve device security and SFX (S-box, Folding and XOR) algorithm is used to enhance communication security. The S-Box construction is entirely different, which increases complexity for the attacker. The second objective utilizes the Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) based MFX (Mapping, Folding and XOR) algorithm to enhance data integrity at the communication level. A hash code is generated using Cipher Blockchain Mode (CBC), ensuring data integrity. Finally, SSX (S-Box, Shuffle using Magic Square and XOR) encryption algorithm is proposed to achieve authentication, which allows only registered users to access the data. Real-time data are collected using various medical sensors and ESP8266 microcontroller.

After that, the proposed SFX, LFSR-MFX and SSX encryption algorithms are implemented to transmit these captured data securely. These algorithms meet security criteria, including integrity, confidentiality and authentication. The performance of the suggested algorithms is compared to the existing algorithms with various metrics such as computation time, communication cost, storage cost and throughput. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed algorithms outperform than the existing ones.

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