A secure key management technique for wireless body area networks

Abstract

In Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN), the key factors to be considered for transmission of confidential data are security and privacy as it is mostly having applications in emergency medical response systems. The lack of security may lead to loss of data privacy resulting in an adversary to bring in bogus data or altering the legal ones. Hence in this study, a secure key management technique for WBAN is proposed. The proposed architecture consists of a set of WBANs connected to the master server via backend server using authentication channel. Initially, backend server and master server use a shared symmetric key. When a node wants to join a network, it forwards a request message protected by the Message Authentication Code (MAC) to the master server via the backend server. The master server verifies the MAC and generates message key and master key for the node and sends it to backend server. The backend server encrypts the message key with the master key and sends it to the node that initiates the joining process. After all nodes receive key information from the master server, the Base Server (BS) schedules a re-keying period to refresh the master key. By simulation results, it is shown that the proposed technique is more authenticated. The proposed approach offers data confidentiality and integrity in WBANs. © 2012 Science Publications.