A Secure and Efficient Group Key Management Protocol with Cooperative Sensor Association in WBANs

Group key management is an integral part of secure multicast.Minimizing the number of rekeying messages, maintaining the forward and backward secrecy has always been a challenging task.Though there are many solutions which reduce the rekeying messages from ( ) to ( ) they increase with the increase in group size.In this paper, we present a centralized key table based communication efficient group key management protocol in which number of rekeying messages is independent of the group size.In this protocol key management server (KMS) divides a group of members into subgroups of size and maintains a table of subkeys along with member ID and one group key.Each member has subkeys, which is a subset of subkeys of KMS and one group key.The proposed protocol requires only one multicast rekeying message per joining of a new member as well as per eviction of any existing member.As the number of rekeying messages is not dependent on group size, it requires less computation.

The need for secure group communication is increasingly evident in a wide variety of governmental, commercial, and Internet communities. Secure group key management is concerned with the methods of issuing and distributing group keys, and the management of those keys over a period of time. To provide perfect secrecy, a central group key manager (GKM) has to perform group rekeying for every join or leave request. Fast rekeying is crucial to an application's performance that has large group size, experiences frequent joins and leaves, or where the GKM is hosted by a group member. Examples of such applications are interactive military simulation, secure video and audio broadcasting, and secure peer-to-peer networks. Traditionally, the rekeying is performed periodically for the batch of requests accumulated during an inter-rekey period. The use of a logical key hierarchy (LKH) by a GKM has been introduced to provide scalable rekeying. If the GKM maintains a LKH of degree d and height h, such that the group size n ≤ dh, and the batch size is R requests, a rekeying requires the GKM to regenerate O(R × h) keys and to perform O(d × R × h) keys encryptions for the new keys distribution. The LKH approach provided a GKM rekeying cost that scales to the logarithm of the group size, however, the number of encryptions increases with increased LKH degree, LKH height, or the batch size. In this dissertation, we introduce a framework for scalable and efficient secure group key management that outperforms the original LKH approach. The framework has six components as follows. First, we present a software model for providing secure group key management that is independent of the application, the security mechanism, and the communication protocol. Second, we focus on a LKH-based GKM and introduce a secure key distribution technique, in which a rekeying requires the GKM to regenerate O( R × h) keys. Instead of encryption, we propose a novel XOR-based key distribution technique, namely XORBP, which performs an XOR operation between keys, and uses random byte patterns (BPs) to distribute the key material in the rekey message to guard against insider attacks. Our experiments show that the XORBP LKH approach substantially reduces a rekeying computation effort by more than 90%. Third, we propose two novel LKH batch rekeying protocols . The first protocol maintains a balanced LKH (B+-LKH) while the other maintains an unbalanced LKH (S-LKH). If a group experiences frequent leaves, keys are deleted form the LKH and maintaining a balanced LKH becomes crucial to the rekeying's process performance. In our experiments, the use of a B+-LKH by a GKM, compared to a S-LKH, is shown to substantially reduce the number of LKH nodes (i.e., storage), and the number of regenerated keys per a rekeying by more than 50%. Moreover, the B +-LKH performance is shown to be bounded with increased group dynamics. Fourth, we introduce a generalized rekey policy that can be used to provide periodic rekeying as well as other versatile rekeying conditions. Fifth, to support distributed group key management, we identify four distributed group-rekeying protocols between a set of peer rekey agents. Finally, we discuss a group member and a GKM's recovery after a short failure time.

A Tree-based Multicast group Key Management (TMKM) protocol for ubiquitous computing is proposed to generate, distribute, and update the group key. The whole group is divided into the server layer and the user layer, and the user layer is further divided into subgroups. Every subgroup is initialised as a balanced binary tree. We employ hierarchical group key management method for the whole topology and centralised group key management method for subgroup, so TMKM takes advantage of centralised and distributed key group management. Compared with some other group key management protocols, TMKM shows higher superiority on security, scalability and computation complexity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge worldwide effect on everyone. A major issue that it has brought to light is the requirement for social distancing resulting in working from home with the ability to utilize video conferencing for meetings. This has become an essential part of everyday life, hence the requirement for reliable computer networks. Coping with social distancing in a medical environment is far more challenging however the use of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and the ability to share the data has become enormous aid. A great deal of development in body sensors has taken place and these devices are becoming commercially available. WBAN devices can be used to measure many human conditions e.g. heart rate, temperature, sleep-patterns etc. to help with diagnosis. Most papers on WBAN concentrate on sensors but this paper investigates the suitability of the technology and the support network required for use in a medical environment. An integrated system using AWS IoT services to support WBAN devices in different environments is covered. The implementation of a smart hub for healthcare monitoring is proposed. The concept of an Intelligent Bed is introduced and a solution is provided consisting of a smart hub attached to a bed. Parameters associated with the wireless characteristics are calculated and use of the reliability of the AWS IoT services for use as a healthcare monitoring system is investigated.KeywordsSensorsHealthcare monitoring systemsBody Area NetworksIntelligent bedsRaspberry PiFriis equationInternet of ThingsAmazon servicesAmazon IoT Greengrass

To ensure private message exchange among the group members, it is desirable to construct secure and efficient group key management schemes. Moreover, these schemes are more versatile if they could support dynamic join or leave of group members. In IET Information Security 2014, Vijayakumar et al. have introduced such a group key management scheme with lightweight overheads in both computation and communication. And this scheme has been used as a building block in many cryptographic protocols afterwards. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that Vijayakumar's scheme suffers some potential security weaknesses. First, after participating in the group communications for some sessions, a group member may still be able to obtain the group key after it leaves the group, and this violates the claimed security property of forward secrecy. Second, some colluding group members may derive another group member's long term secret key, and obviously, this has more serious consequences. One of the main reasons for the existence of these attacks is that the security analyses in Vijayakumar's scheme are informal and they cannot cover the dynamic environment. To address this issue, the authors’ suggestion is that heuristic arguments of security are not adequate in the design of cryptographic protocols, but formal security definitions and proofs are required.

In humanware applications, resource constrained sensor devices are tactically placed on human body to form Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). Then the WBAN is used for monitoring biometrics and movements of human body. Keeping in mind the resource constrained devices, WBANs are treated just like wireless sensor networks when considering a solution for key management. However, WBANs differ from traditional wireless sensor networks in scale, topology and security requirements. Also, the WBANs can also use random values from biometric measurements for the generation of keys. These differences render the key management schemes of WSNs inefficient and overly complex for WBANs scenario. Therefore, we propose a key management scheme that is efficient and fulfills the security requirements of WBAN.

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are integral to modern healthcare systems, providing continuous health monitoring and real-time data transmission. The sensitivity of medical data being transmitted makes security a significant concern in WBANs. This study explores the application of the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (ECDH) algorithm to enhance security within WBANs. The study investigates the suitability of ECC for this context and evaluates the performance and security implications of implementing ECDH in WBANs. The findings reveal that ECDH provides a robust and computationally efficient solution for secure key exchange in WBANs, addressing inherent vulnerabilities. The adoption of ECC-based ECDH is poised to bolster data confidentiality and integrity in WBANs, promoting trust and widespread use of these networks in healthcare applications. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding security measures in WBANs and opens new avenues for the secure transmission of sensitive medical information.

PurposeSecurity of wireless body area network communication is highly important as it directly impacts human life. This paper aims to focus on battlefield application area of WBAN for implementing security where data must be protected against various possible attacks before delivering over a public network.Design/methodology/approachProviding a strong security system is still a research challenge due to low computational power of used sensors for protecting transmission data. In this paper, the authors have proposed an optimized security solution for multithreaded wireless body area network (MWBAN) using trust-based distributed group key management technique to overcome the drawbacks of existing elliptical curve cryptography-homomorphism (ECC-Homomorphism) scheme as well as coded cooperative data exchange group key management (CCDE_GKM) scheme.FindingsThe proposed optimized security solution is implemented for a particular deployment strategy and test runs are conducted. It is found that when number of attack nodes increased to 25, compared to ECC–Homomorphism and CCDE_GKM for the proposed trust-based distributed group key management technique there is an improvement in performance parameters such as throughput is dropped to only 10.11 Kbps, average delay is just 3.4 s, energy consumption is maximum 29 joules, packet loss is only 12.3 per cent, 90.9 per cent truly can detect attack, only 8.9 per cent false attack detection and 84 per cent true negative detection.Social implicationsMedical care can be provided to human beings with much ease and flexibility via remote monitoring. The user can be at any place, can do his/her everyday work while remotely being monitored of their health parameters and secured transmission of their data to the health-care center for medical service in need.Originality/valueThis paper presents an optimized security solution for MWBAN using trust-based distributed group key management technique where bilinear pairing theory is used as major cryptographic base. Optimal key is selected based on trust value and also attack nodes are detected based on trust value to control participation in communication.

The introduction of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) grows significantly regarding its flexibility, accuracy, costs efficiency and mobility. It supports a huge range of innovative applications that improve the quality of life and enhance services. In the health care system, the majority of WBAN applications are responsible of handling critical data in order to monitor the patient health state and to save his live in many cases. That's why WBAN should efficiently deliver patient's vital signs to specialized medical entity (doctor, emergency, ‥). However, the particular architecture of WBAN and the movement patterns of the body part affect the communication quality. Moreover, the number of WBAN nodes increases the contention level to access to the shared wireless medium; this consequently produces packets collisions and the loss of critical data. We evaluated in this article the performance of the WBAN within different scenarios. We investigated different effects of the number of nodes as well as the different body state (standing, running) on the WBAN's reliability. We, finally, proposed a simple, no cost and convenient Adaptive Transmit Power Mechanism (ATPM) to improve the WBAN link quality without consuming unnecessary energy.

This paper explores how the integration and performance of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) contribute to sustainable healthcare practices. WBANs play a crucial role in reducing the environmental footprint of healthcare systems by providing continuous monitoring that can prevent unnecessary hospitalizations and reduce the consumption of disposable medical supplies. Additionally, the design of WBANs using environmentally friendly materials, low-power devices, and recyclable components is discussed to optimize the sustainability of healthcare practices. To enhance infrastructure, services, and quality of life, new technologies have been integrated to improve WBANs. Patients' essential health data may be continuously and instantly collected thanks to these networks, and healthcare providers can receive the data right away for quick analysis and action. WBANs have healthcare benefits, but there are also major drawbacks. Technologies that can combine low power consumption, minimal delay, and high enough data rates are needed for WBANs in order to support a variety of medical applications. The effectiveness of the LoRaWAN and IEEE 802.15.6 technologies in WBAN is assessed in this paper. With the use of seven crucial metrics which are throughput, arrival rate, delay, energy consumption, residual energy, network lifetime, and packet delivery ratio (PDR), this paper seeks to study which technology is appropriate with WBANs using NS3 as a simulation program. With network parameters, 1000 seconds, and 50 nodes, the paper evaluated the performance of each technology. The results show that IEEE 802.15.6 is superior in terms of throughput, PDR, and arrival rate whereas LoRaWAN is superior in terms of energy consumption, residual energy, network lifetime, and delay.

Body Area Network (BAN) is widely used in medical healthcare systems. Under WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) technology many applications are developed in Body Area Network (BAN). In medical applications the sensor network is widely used now days. Applications like Healthcare Monitoring System, Smart Hospitality, and Continuous patient monitoring system are under Body Area Network (BAN) technology. Sensors are attached on the body of patient by which values are to be taken, analyzed for healthcare system. WBAN offers wide variety for evaluation of healthcare in medical systems. Various sensors can be connected to the on clothing or on-body and also implanted under skin. There sensors are used to calculate the parameters from the body of patient. And the values are taken from sensors is given to the analyzing device or hardware by the wired or wireless devices such as Bluetooth, Zigbee etc. BAN gives wide availability of healthcare devices all the time. Projects are done in Body Area Network (BAN) from 1976. A wearable computer, sensor network based medical monitoring system, Europian Mobihealth etc. are some of the examples of project in WBAN. Wireless Body area network is now often used in Mobile Health Application and it is emerging technology which gives facilities for human health applications.

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) downlink system in vicinity of a healthcare system. We assume that the healthcare system is a body area network (BAN) system which is based on UWB (Ultra Wide Band) technology. So, the effect of UWB BAN system on UMTS system is investigated by simulation. From the simulation results, we found that the UMTS system is considerably affected by the UWB BAN interference. However, in order to battle this interference and achieve good performance for UMTS system, we found that it is very necessary to carefully raise the UMTS base station transmitted power against that of UWB BAN system. So, the minimum requirements for UMTS system to overcome this interference are stated in this work.

Wireless Body area Networks (WBANs)- groups of sensors deployed inside a human body- are envisioned to improve the healthcare domain by continuously monitoring and reporting patient's health to the health care systems. However, the nature of openly deployed sensor nodes, coupled with the lack of security, make it easy for intruders to attack WBANs. In this paper, we propose a new scheme, PMAS, to achieve mutual authentication between a cell phone (personal device representing the sink) and WBANs' sensor nodes. In addition, based on a modified idea of Diffie-Hellman key exchange scheme, we establish a shared secret key between that sink and every sensor node in the network. The security analysis shows that PMAS thwarts different attacks, including the replay, fake sink, fake sensor, and Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. Furthermore, comparing to previous authentication schemes, the computation and communication overheads added by our scheme are much smaller than those in previous schemes.

It is worth mentioning that the growing use of wireless sensor networks, evolution in Nano biosensors and micro medical equipment, remote health monitoring has affected treatment. Since people have tended to ubiquitous health monitoring, real time medical health care systems will have great significance. It is crystal clear that offering a new design of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in real time healthcare's system is very important. To pave the way for the discussion, we would like to pay your attention to the previous studies in which we have improved energy efficiency and security in WBAN. To pave the way for further discussion now, we would like to review the third aspect of WBAN challenge in maximum efficiency and performance, with the approaching security and optimal energy in the real time health care system applications. In a word, in this paper urgency of using WBAN for real time telemedicine is to be discussed.

Nowadays, the design and construction of efficient internet of things (IoTs) has become a new strategies for improving living quality of all aspects. Emerging as one of the most significant extension of medical IoTs, wireless body area networks (WBANs) is capable of monitoring crucial physiological and behavioral information through wearable sensors, offering a new paradigm for the next-generation healthcare systems. As a matter of fact, due to the inherent open wireless communicating characteristics, data security and user privacy issues of WBANs have attracted attentions from both industry and academia. So far, lots of relevant researches emphasize on secure transmission and privacy protection. However, the computation and communication limitations for individual WBAN sensor have not been taken proper consideration. Moreover, the implementation of cloud computing infrastructure has provided WBANs with superior transmission and processing qualities. Emphasizing on the above issues, this paper construct a pairing-free authentication and sensor cooperation scheme in cloud-assisted WBANs, where most of the practical requirements for WBAN sensors could be satisfied. Our design guarantee the sensor anonymity in the whole transmission session. Note that our design offers pairing-free validation procedure followed with active sensor cooperation, which is suitable for massive sensor scenarios. The security analysis proves that our designed scheme is capable of achieving desired security properties and offer adequate resistances to the charted malicious attacks. Meanwhile, security comparison demonstrates that the proposed protocol is secure compared with the state-of-the-arts.