A lightweight high capacity ECG watermark with protection against data loss

Abstract

Wireless Body Sensor Networks are used for pervasive health monitoring and often composed of a large number of sensors communicating over wireless connections. The wireless nature of WBSN poses challenges in terms of security and reliability since sensory data are vulnerable to interception, intrusion and modifications. Moreover, there are ergonomic limitations such as size and weight on wearable sensors that restrict their computational power. In this paper, we propose a variation of the Wong algorithm used in digital watermarking that is suitable for implementation on simple devices with limited processing capabilities and protects data from tampering between point of origin, which could be a wearable sensor, and the point of distribution which might be a Smartphone. At the same time, the watermark has the advantage to detect and accurately localize degraded data and could rapidly recover after data loss.