Area-Delay Efficient Security Scheme for Smart Hospital Systems

In recent years, traditional Hospital facilities are adopting new technologies. Smart Hospitals mostly utilize the Internet of Things (loT) technology due to its vast capabilities in connectivity. This loT network requires specific protocols for proper functionality. Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is suitable for managing the communication and routing procedures of the resource constrained loT environment. Nevertheless, both MQTT and loT have various vulnerabilities and threats that must first be addressed. In this paper, a lightweight key management procedure is analyzed, an end-to-end payload encryption method is followed, and a processor with different cryptographic mechanisms is implemented. This combination of processes best complements the E-Health-based Hospital architecture, requiring minimum resources and complete security. The proposed crypto processor efficiently implements three different cryptographic primitives in a RISC- V architecture, providing flexibility. It achieves the best area-delay compared to other hardware-based security schemes, with 61.3% resource reduction and minimum added computation overhead. This is accomplished due to proper formatting of specific instructions and a function, operation and register sharing methodology.