An evaluation of the power consumption of coauthentication as a continuous user authentication method in mobile systems

Abstract

Methods for continuous user authentication have become important with the proliferation of mobile devices in m-Health and human-centered systems. These methods must guarantee user identity with high assurance, authenticate without explicit intervention, and be power-aware. We present an evaluation of the power consumption of collaborative authentication (coauthentication) as a continuous authentication method. Coauthentication is a single-factor method in which multiple registered devices work together to authenticate a user, minimizing obtrusiveness while providing high user authentication assurance. To evaluate coauthentication's power consumption, we conducted experiments using two Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices and a stand-alone server in a local area network and running coauthentication continuously for eight hours. We found that the protocol uses approximately between 1.19% and 4.0% of the total power used by the devices. These results give evidence of the feasibility of using coauthentication as a continuous authentication method in mobile devices from the power consumption perspective.