Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physiological Measurement. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01

Improved Wireless Security through Physical Layer Protocol Manipulation and Radio Frequency Fingerprinting

Wireless networks are particularly vulnerable to spoofing and route poisoning attacks due to the contested transmission medium. Traditional bit-layer defenses including encryption keys and MAC address control lists are vulnerable to extraction and identity spoofing, respectively. This dissertation explores three novel strategies to leverage the wireless physical layer to improve security in low-rate wireless personal area networks. The first, physical layer protocol manipulation, identifies true transceiver design within remote devices through analysis of replies in response to packets transmitted with modified physical layer headers. Results herein demonstrate a methodology that correctly differentiates among six IEEE 802.15.4 transceiver classes with greater than 99% accuracy, regardless of claimed bit-layer identity. The second strategy, radio frequency fingerprinting, accurately identifies the true source of every wireless transmission in a network, even among devices of the same design and manufacturer. Results suggest that even low-cost signal collection receivers can achieve greater than 90% authentication accuracy within a defense system based on radio frequency fingerprinting. The third strategy, based on received signal strength quantification, can be leveraged to rapidly locate suspicious transmission sources and to perform physical security audits of critical networks. Results herein reduce mean absolute percentage error of a widely-utilized distance estimation model 20% by examining signal strength measurements from real-world networks in a military hospital and a civilian hospital

The s-mote: a versatile heterogeneous multi-radio platform for wireless sensor networks applications

This paper presents a novel architecture and its implementation for a versatile, miniaturised mote which can communicate concurrently using a variety of combinations of ISM bands, has increased processing capability, and interoperability with mainstream GSM technology. All these features are integrated in a small form factor platform. The platform can have many configurations which could satisfy a variety of applications’ constraints. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first integrated platform of this type reported in the literature. The proposed platform opens the way for enhanced levels of Quality of Service (QoS), with respect to reliability, availability and latency, in addition to facilitating interoperability and power reduction compared to existing platforms. The small form factor also allows potential of integration with other mobile platforms including smart phones

Wireless Sensor System for Monitoring and Control

With the fast development of wireless sensor network (WSN) technology, a large number of applications have been widely used over the past few years. As a matter of fact, wireless monitoring and control system is unavoidable one of the applications that consist of WSN nodes. A generic, modular and stackable WSN node, named UWASA Node has been developed by the University of Vaasa and Aalto University lately. Besides, SurfNet node, developed by Seinäjoki University of Applied Science, is designed as low-power consumption, high-data rate, small and powerful sensor node that is suitable to implement the monitoring and control tasks under multiple conditions. In this work, a wireless sensor system for monitoring and control is integrated and developed by one UWASA Node, one Linux board, and SurfNet nodes. Firstly, the basics of WSN including IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee standard are introduced. Secondly, a new design and development of the hardware and software for the wireless sensor system is explained in detail. After that, several experiments are performed to verify the system performance due to the limited computational and power source of the sensor nodes in the WSN. In one word, this developed wireless sensor system provides a wireless solution for remote monitoring and control of the deployed environment.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format