Design and development of secure device association and communication in wireless body area networks

• Main Author: Loke, Lup Peng.
• Other Authors: School of Computer Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer applications::Life and medical sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51975
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of distributed sensor nodes that monitor specific environmental variables and transmit data back to a central node for further processing. One type of WSN is the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), which comprises of several wearable physiological sensor nodes distributed across the body and a central unit that manages them. As the sensor nodes transmit data about the wearer’s health across a shared wireless medium, it is important that communication is encrypted to prevent eavesdropping by others. In addition, multiple WBANs would likely be deployed in close proximity within the same area (e.g. a hospital), which gives rise to the issue of being able to identify and associate sensor nodes to the correct WBAN it is for. The purpose of this project is to develop a Dynamic and Secure Association Protocol of sensor nodes to a WBAN and an End to End Secure Communication Protocol within the WBAN. These two protocols are developed for ReWin, a WBAN platform project by the Institute of Infocomm Research. Advanced Encryption Standard is used as the underlying cryptographic algorithm, while Near Field Communication and Zero-Knowledge Protocol are used in the association protocol. With the integration of the two protocols into ReWin, data and control packets being transmitted between sensor nodes will be kept confidential from unauthorized users. In addition, users of ReWin can manage the sensor nodes in their WBAN via a NFC-enabled mobile device. While the protocols achieve the objectives mentioned above, further work can be done to increase the overall security of the project. To reduce the error probability, multiple sets of challenges can be issued to the sensor node being associated. Also, dynamic key generation and key renewal algorithms will make the system more robust in the event of a key being compromised.