Secure and Efficient Data Communication Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a network of wireless sensor nodes, which monitor mobile health when placed carefully on the human body or in the wearable cloths. WBAN have a great potential for the growth and development of the future ubiquitous health systems, however; the security concern associated with the current WBAN is an alarming challenge. Security of a body area network (BAN) is unavoidable as it is mainly used for securing the life of patients and soldiers. By securing the BAN we actually secure the life of its wearer. Two techniques i.e. Physiological values (PV’s) based key management ,which generate random keys by using the vital signs of human body and Pre-loading based scheme, which will be used to strengthen the security of our PVs based scheme. The potential limitation of PV’s is short keys generation, which can be easily brute forced and high computational cost whereas in Pre-loading the keys are not random and require enough keys storage. In this paper we will merge PV’s and pre-loading techniques by using electrocardiography (EKG/ECG) values of PVs and pre-loading based schemes to strengthen the security. The applied technique will enhance the security as well as reduce storage and power consumption. Key words: Physiological values (PV’s), Electrocardiogram (EKG/ECG), Wireless body area network (WBAN)