Mutual Authentication in Body Area Networks Using Signal Propagation Characteristics

Abstract

Developments in wireless communications and wearable devices have facilitated the emergence of a network of tiny sensors embedded in, on or around human body called Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Over the last decade, WBAN has increasingly been playing a vital role in modern medical systems because of its potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery. The data collected by the sensors contain sensitive information and are transmitted via wireless channels. However, the openness of these channels makes WBAN vulnerable to attacks by unauthorized users. Therefore, secure authentication and data encryption schemes in WBAN are essential. The resource constraint nature of the sensors makes traditional cryptographic schemes unsuitable. Consequently, authentication schemes based on channel characteristics are proposed, which are more suitable with fewer requirements. However, existing approaches do not consider mutual authentication as well as passive/active attacks. Motivated by these limitations, we propose in this paper, a mutual authentication and data encryption scheme based on signal propagation characteristics and enhanced butterfly algorithm. To validate the effectiveness of our scheme, we conducted an extensive real-world experiment involving 5 volunteers in indoor and outdoor areas, under distinct scenarios. We further conducted security and performance analyses to validate the effectiveness of our scheme in terms of resources and its resilience to various attacks. The results of the experiments and the analyses show that our scheme could mutually identify legitimate users and protect user data against active/passive eavesdropping attacks with minimal overhead.INDEX TERMS Authentication, active attack, passive attack, signal propagation characteristic, wireless body area network (WBAN).

A Perspective Review of Security Challenges in Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications

“…The following cryptographic techniques concentrate on the security and privacy issues and obtained efficient results such as high reliability and accuracy. Biometrics techniques [ 19 ] Key management scheme [ 41 ] Mutual authentication scheme [ 25 ] Session key arrangement scheme [ 39 ] Elliptical Curve cryptography [ 11 ] Lightweight Scheme [ 31 ] Trust management scheme [ 29 ] …”

“…The techniques involved in machine learning and regression algorithms to obtain accurate results and lesser resource overhead. Umar et al [ 25 ] suggested the signal propagation-based mutual authentication scheme to detect active and passive network attacks. Active attacks manipulate the entire content of the data transmission, such as adding extra characters and spacing between them.…”

A Lightweight and Secure Anonymous User Authentication Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

“…However, due to the openness of the wireless channel, the data transmitted in WBAN can easily be eavesdropped or tampered with by unauthorized users. Since these sensitive patient data are the basis of clinical diagnosis, any data leakage or modification may put the patient's life at risk [3][4][5]. Consequently, it is necessary and important to provide a safe and reliable authentication protocol in the WBAN to ensure that only legitimate users can obtain the patient's sensitive information.…”

An Efficient Lightweight Key Agreement and Authentication Scheme for WBAN

“…The authors of papers [17], [30] presented the authentication schemes based on channel characteristics. Such schemes are good for providing key entropy based on channel variation which results in robust authentication.…”