Hybrid Lightweight Cryptographic Framework for Enhancing Security and Efficiency in Healthcare Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are integral to Healthcare IoT (H-IoT) for continuous patient monitoring, yet they face constraints in energy, computation, and memory while requiring strong security. This paper introduces a hybrid lightweight cryptographic framework that integrates symmetric ciphers with authenticated encryption to achieve an optimal balance between performance and protection. The framework was evaluated through simulations and hardware experiments, measuring encryption latency, energy usage, memory footprint, and resilience against replay and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. The results reveal the improvement in security with low resource overhead using ASCON128 cipher and achieved better efficiency reduce the encryption time by 25% and energy consumption by 30% even it requires more resources. This proposed hybrid architecture improves gateway node security, finally the proposed healthcare WSN proved safe, energy efficient and scalable according to the proposal architectural farmwork.