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Efficient and Location-Private Communication Protocols for WBSNs
An Braeken and Dave Singelee

To provide healthcare to large heterogeneous populations, one envisions new ways of remote healthcare monitoring in the form of ubiquitous and pervasive healthcare systems. However, the widespread deployment of this technology will depend on the extent to which security and privacy can be guaranteed. In this article, we propose a set of efficient, practical and scalable cryptographic protocols for wireless body sensor networks. Taking into account the computational resources of the sensors, the cryptographic operations performed by the latter exclusively rely on symmetric key cryptography. Our communication protocols guarantee data confidentiality, data authentication, and location privacy of the patient. In addition, we propose an authorization scheme based on time frames. This restricts the doctor’s access to the patient’s medical data in time, and explicitly enforces the minimal data disclosure principle. Our proposed remote monitoring system outperforms the current state-of-the-art, since it offers security and privacy protection, efficiency and scalability.

Keywords: Wireless body sensor network, symmetric key cryptography, data authentication, location privacy

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