A Cloud-Aware Scalable Architecture for Distributed Edge-Enabled BCI Biosensor System
BCI biosensors enable continuous monitoring of neural activity, but existing systems face challenges in scalability, latency, and reliable integration with cloud infrastructure. This work presents a cloud-aware, real-time cognitive grid architecture for multimodal BCI biosensors, validated at the system level through a full physical prototype. The system integrates the BioAmp EXG Pill for signal acquisition with an RP2040 microcontroller for local preprocessing using edge-resident TinyML deployment for on-device feature/inference feasibility coupled with environmental context sensors to augment signal context for downstream analytics talking to the external world via Wi-Fi/4G connectivity. A tiered data pipeline was implemented: SD card buffering for raw signals, Redis for near-real-time streaming, PostgreSQL for structured analytics, and AWS S3 with Glacier for long-term archival. End-to-end validation demonstrated consistent edge-level inference with bounded latency, while cloud-assisted telemetry and analytics exhibited variable transmission and processing delays consistent with cellular connectivity and serverless execution characteristics; packet loss remained below 5%. Visualization was achieved through Python 3.10 using Matplotlib GUI, Grafana 10.2.3 dashboards, and on-device LCD displays. Hybrid deployment strategies-local development, simulated cloud testing, and limited cloud usage for benchmark capture-enabled cost-efficient validation while preserving architectural fidelity and latency observability. The results establish a scalable, modular, and energy-efficient biosensor framework, providing a foundation for advanced analytics and translational BCI applications to be explored in subsequent work, with explicit consideration of both edge-resident TinyML inference and cloud-based machine learning workflows.
Authors
- Balázs Zoltán Gulyás (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9295-2460)
- Sayantan Ghosh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-6856)
- Raghavan Bhuvanakantham (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4368-1731)
- Anand Mohan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8314-0425)
- Purushothaman Bhuvana Harishita
- Padmanabhan Sindhujaa
- Domokos Máthé
- Parasuraman Padmanabhan
Institutions
- Semmelweis University (HU)
- Nanyang Technological University (SG)
- PSG Institute of Medical Sciences & Research (IN)
- Karolinska Institutet (SE)
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab (FR)
- Vellore Institute of Technology University (IN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Biosensors
- Published
- 2026-03-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/bios16030157
- Primary Topic
- EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Semmelweis Egyetem
- Magyarország Kormánya
- Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University
- National Research, Development and Innovation Office
- Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University