An Efficient Lightweight Key Agreement and Authentication Scheme for WBAN

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a promising field that may improve the quality of life by using it in patients' health monitoring process. However, the mobility and open access of wireless networks have resulted in several security gaps which may lead to critical health-related data compromise issues. Therefore, there existed a need to develop a mechanism to secure patient health-related data from all security impairments. Recently, a lightweight authentication scheme that depends on the assumption that the base node is reliable is proposed. Nevertheless, it does not seem feasible practically. Hence, the researchers present a lightweight cryptographic scheme based on three levels that provide anonymous key agreement and authentication for the data communicated on the wireless channel. The proposed authentication scheme shows its efficiency to protect against various known cyber-attacks especially the base station compromise attack and sensor node impersonation attack. The scheme was formally verified with BAN logic and simulated informally using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocol and Applications (AVISPA) tool. The proposed key agreement and authentication scheme was also compared with the results of other related researches. The simulation results and security analysis indicate that the proposed improved scheme has overcome different identified gaps in terms of storage requirements, computational, and communicational costs.

Keywords

• Patient health monitoring
• authentication
• WBAN
• communication
• cyber attacks