A lightweight and flexible mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN

Purpose A wireless body area network (WBAN) is a collection of sensing devices attached to a person’s body that is typically used during health care to track their physical state. This paper aims to study the security challenges and various attacks that occurred while transferring a person’s sensitive medical diagnosis information in WBAN. Design/methodology/approach This technology has significantly gained prominence in the medical field. These wearable sensors are transferring information to doctors, and there are numerous possibilities for an intruder to pose as a doctor and obtain information about the patient’s vital information. As a result, mutual authentication and session key negotiations are critical security challenges for wearable sensing devices in WBAN. This work proposes an improved mutual authentication and key agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN. The existing related schemes require more computational and storage requirements, but the proposed method provides a flexible solution with less complexity. Findings As sensor devices are resource-constrained, proposed approach only makes use of cryptographic hash-functions and bit-wise XOR operations, hence it is lightweight and flexible. The protocol’s security is validated using the AVISPA tool, and it will withstand various security attacks. The proposed protocol’s simulation and performance analysis are compared to current relevant schemes and show that it produces efficient outcomes. Originality/value This technology has significantly gained prominence in the medical sector. These sensing devises transmit information to doctors, and there are possibilities for an intruder to pose as a doctor and obtain information about the patient’s vital information. Hence, this paper proposes a lightweight and flexible protocol for mutual authentication and key agreement for wearable sensing devices in WBAN only makes use of cryptographic hash-functions and bit-wise XOR operations. The proposed protocol is simulated using AVISPA tool and its performance is better compared to the existing methods. This paper proposes a novel improved mutual authentication and key-agreement protocol for wearable sensing devices in WBAN.

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Recent advancements in flexible and wearable sensors for biomedical and healthcare applications

In the past decades, with the increasing awareness of personal health management, various types of flexible and wearable body sensors have been developed. Thanks to the superiorities of advanced wearable technologies, including miniaturization and portability, stretchability and comfortability, intelligent human-machine interface, etc., flexible and wearable body sensors hold great promise in the next generation biomedicine and healthcare applications. Unfortunately, the data precision, response speed, sensitivity and selectivity, durability, compatibility with flexible substrates, and preparation technics still need to be enhanced and refined to meet the requirements of clinical evaluations or even commercialization. According to the working principles, flexible and wearable sensing platform can be roughly divided into four categories: physical sensors, chemical sensors, biosensors, and the fusion of different types of sensors. Here, a brief review focused on recent developments of these flexible and wearable sensors applied especially to biomedicine and healthcare is presented. In addition, the existing challenges and potential opportunities ahead in flexible and wearable sensor technologies are discussed. At last, an outlook of wearable sensing platforms in biomedicine and healthcare is proposed. We hope this review can provide guidance for superior flexible and wearable sensing technologies in the future.

Recent Advances in Wearable Sensing Technologies

Wearable sensing technologies are having a worldwide impact on the creation of novel business opportunities and application services that are benefiting the common citizen. By using these technologies, people have transformed the way they live, interact with each other and their surroundings, their daily routines, and how they monitor their health conditions. We review recent advances in the area of wearable sensing technologies, focusing on aspects such as sensor technologies, communication infrastructures, service infrastructures, security, and privacy. We also review the use of consumer wearables during the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and we discuss open challenges that must be addressed to further improve the efficacy of wearable sensing systems in the future.