Shared-node IoT network architecture with ubiquitous homomorphic encryption for healthcare monitoring

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) is a powerful platform for healthcare monitoring for chronic diseases as a result of fairly inexpensive, secure, reliable sensors that do not require a complicated deployment process. In this paper we present a novel shared–node IoT network architecture that can be used to reduce the monetary cost of deploying proof of concept IoT sensor networks using non–ubiquitous technologies. The proposed architecture shares the services of some sensor nodes in the network between multiple users to reduce the monetary cost. We found that IoT networks can be vulnerable to spoofing and data loss; to reduce the probability of these attacks from succeeding, the proposed IoT architecture utilises a ubiquitous homomorphic encryption (UHE) to intrinsically validate the nodes, users, and the data. We use the NS3 simulation platform to validate the proposed architecture. The results show that an IoT sensor network using the proposed architecture can be easily deployed as a software update and the use of UHE does not significantly increase the monetary cost of any single sensor node.