A study on designing authentication protocols for wireless body area networks

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Networks(WBAN) is an emerging field of research which focuses on future medical and tactical applications. The IEEE 802.15.6 is a developing standard which defines a short-range highly reliable communication network that comprises of low power sensors worn/implanted in the body. Designing any protocol for WBAN has to take care of various design limitations such as limited computation and storage capacity, varied link speed, fast node commissioning, mobility support, low latency, heterogeneous device support and power efficiency etc. WBAN communication is considered confidential and private due to the type of sensitive data involved in it (i.e. medical and tactical information of the user). Security of such confidential data is an essential requirement before implementing any WBAN based application. IEEE 802.15.6 proposes frame-level security through three security associations and four key agreement protocols; however, it posses various vulnerabilities. Moreover, it does not provide various other security features such as perfect forward secrecy, anonymity and Unlinkability etc. This has lead to the development of various security protocols to fill in the gaps. In the literature, various authentication protocols have been proposed to cater to the need of WBAN. These protocols employ various methods such as cryptography, biometrics and channel-based techniques to provide authentication. In this research work, Various attacks that may violate the security in WBAN have been studied and analysed. It has been... newline