Secure Brain-to-Brain Communication With Edge Computing for Assisting Post-Stroke Paralyzed Patients

Stroke affects 33 million individuals worldwide every year and is one of the prime causes of paralysis. Due to partial or full paralysis, most of the patients affected by stroke depend on caregivers for the rest of their lives. Easy and efficient communication from the patient to the caregiver is a vital parameter determining the quality of life during rehabilitation. Several solutions, such as brain–computer interface (BCI) systems and exoskeletons, are proposed for post-stroke rehabilitation. But, most of these devices are expensive, sophisticated, and put an additional burden on the patient. Also, the communication between the patient and the caregiver is insecure. In this article, the brain-to-brain interface technique is integrated with an efficient encryption algorithm to enable secure transmission of information from the patient’s brain to the caregiver. When a patient thinks of a word or a number, the thought is transmitted with the help of an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset through a wireless medium to the recipient, who correctly interprets the thoughts conveyed by the sender and types the same alphabet on the keyboard at his/her end. The transmitted message at the edge is encrypted with a lightweight novel tiny symmetric algorithm (NTSA), which can only be decrypted at the edge receiver. The Internet of Things integrated system is also flexible to send signals to multiple caregivers at the same time. The proposed method tested on ten users gave an average effective concentration percentage of 78.9% along with the secure transmission, which is a significant result compared with existing solutions.