Wireless body area networks: A critical review of the state-of-the-art security schemes

Abstract

The continued advancement of information communication technologies (ICT) has led to the adoption of internet of things in the healthcare sector. One of such application domain of ICT is the wireless body area network (WBAN), which enables remote monitoring of vital biomedical parameters on the patient or the elderly. Upon collection of these parameters, they are forwarded to the remote hospital servers where analysis and appropriate actions are taken. Obviously, the data exchanged in these networks is sensitive and private and hence can have devastating effects on the patient if leaked to the unintended parties. Consequently, many security solutions have been developed in literature. The goal of this paper is to carry out an extensive review of these security schemes in an effort to pin point their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the findings, it is evident that many of these security solutions try to attain a number of security and privacy protection. However, it is noted that these schemes still lack many of the required security goals such as anonymity, untraeability, forward key secrecy as well as resistance to many of the conventional attacks. Therefore, some recommendations for the attainment of perfect privacy and security are given towards the end of this paper.