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Key Agreement Schemes in Wireless Body Area Networks: Taxonomy and State-of-the-Art

Journal of Medical Systems volume 39, Article number: 115 (2015) Cite this article

Abstract

Advances in wearable and implantable biosensors have enabled the applicability and usability of wireless body area networks (WBANs). A WBAN allows biosensors to collect and communicate human physiological data using wireless communication. The communication security of the collected data in WBAN is a major concern. Because of the dependability of cryptographic schemes for key management, these have become an important aspect of this security. However, the extremely constrained nature of biosensors has made designing key management schemes a challenging task. For this reason, many lightweight key management schemes have been proposed to overcome these constraints. In this article, we present a review of the state of the art of these solutions. We classify the WBAN schemes into three classes and evaluate them based on adequate metrics for key management in WBAN.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend their sincere appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for its funding of this research through the Research Group Project no. RGP-VPP-214. The authors would also like to thank the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan, for its support through the indigenous PhD fellowship program.

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  1. King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Aftab Ali & Farrukh Aslam Khan

  2. National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, A. K. Brohi Road, H-11/4, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Aftab Ali & Farrukh Aslam Khan

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  1. Aftab Ali
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Correspondence to Farrukh Aslam Khan.

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Ali, A., Khan, F.A. Key Agreement Schemes in Wireless Body Area Networks: Taxonomy and State-of-the-Art. J Med Syst 39, 115 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0272-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0272-9

Keywords

  • Wireless body area network (WBAN)
  • Key agreement
  • Security and privacy
  • e-Health