Secure bus architecture for IMDs

Abstract

Epilepsy is a system-wide phenomenon which manifests physically across the body in various forms such as rapid muscle tone, sweating, elevated heart rate and synchronized neuron firing. Many of these aspects appear ahead of an epileptic incident. If combined together, these aspects are tell-tale signs of an imminent ictal event. Because of these observations, a wireless medical body area network (MBAN) has been proposed, which implements multimodal-data integration and closed-loop seizure suppression. The design and implementation of the MBAN introduces several challenges, such as data collection, seizure prediction and suppression, secure pairing and communication and the design of a user friendly interface. This thesis will focus on the design and implementation of a secure bus architecture that connects multiple processing cores, a sensor and an actuator within an MBAN node. The interconnect will provide communication between the masters and slaves via an AMBA AHB-Lite protocol. Furthermore, a memory protection unit (MPU) will deny accesses from unauthorized peripherals. Additionally, the prototype will provide a secure communication protocol for updating the MPU. Finally, the prototype will be able to communicate wirelessly with a smartphone. The deliverable will be a proof-of-concept implementation on an FGPA, demonstrating the previously described functionalities. Nevertheless, the design choices will be made with the application in mind.