Int J Performability Eng ›› 2021, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (8): 711-721.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.21.08.p7.711721

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Secure ECG Signal Transmission for Smart Healthcare

Harinee S and Anand Mahendran*   

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore Tamil Nadu, 632014, India
  • Submitted on ; Revised on ; Accepted on
  • Contact: * E-mail address: anandmahendran82@gmail.com
  • About author:Harinee S is an aspiring scholar in the field of Computer Science and Engineering at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Her research interests include health care, cloud computing, information security, robotics and technology innovation. She received her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Pondicherry University in 2016.
    Dr. Anand Mahendran received his Ph.D (Computer Science and Engineering) degree from VIT University, India in the year 2012, M.E (Computer Science and Engineering) degree from Anna University, India in the year 2005 and B.E (Computer Science and Engineering) degree from VIT University, India in the year 2003. His research interests include formal language theory and automata, bio-inspired computing models. He has published more than 30 papers in international journals and refereed international conferences. He is currently working as an Associate Professor in School of Computer Science and Engineering in VIT Vellore, India

Abstract: The health care system is overwhelming with COVID-19 patients since the end of 2019. Many countries have postponed their public screening programs and are fighting to maintain balance between essential health care and COVID-19 pandemic. At this point of time, IoT along with artificial intelligence (AI) provides a solution for a remote IoT based healthcare system. IoT based wearable devices collect data and send them to the cloud via IoT Gateway. Further, the data are analyzed by AI to raise alerts at times of emergencies like a sudden drop-in pulse rate etc. AI needs a large database for training and processing. This threatens the patient's data security and privacy. To overcome this threat, an encryption algorithm can be used. When it comes to remote healthcare, monitoring of cardio vascular muscles is the most important of all. This can be done by an electrocardiogram (ECG). These ECG signals are transmitted in case of emergency and are stored in remote servers. The ECG signals are unique in nature and they can be used in biometric devices which attract hackers. To avoid the intruders, the data is encrypted and transmitted. In this paper, we provide a lightweight cellular automaton (CA) based encryption algorithm to suit limited power and low memory devices. For ECG based evaluation, the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database is considered.

Key words: AI, IoT based health care, cellular automata, security, ECG