On Vulnerabilities of the Security Association in the IEEE 802.15.6 Standard

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) support a variety of real-time health monitoring and consumer electronics applications. The latest international standard for WBAN is the IEEE 802.15.6. The security association in this standard includes four elliptic curve-based key agreement protocols that are used for generating a master key. In this paper, we challenge the security of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard by showing vulnerabilities of those four protocols to several attacks. We perform a security analysis on the protocols, and show that they all have security problems, and are vulnerable to different attacks

Study of MAC Protocols for Mobile Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) also referred to as a body sensor network (BSN), is a wireless network of wearable computing devices. It has emerged as a key technology to provide real-time health monitoring of a patient and diagnose many life threatening diseases. WBAN operates in close vicinity to, on, or inside a human body and supports a variety of medical and non-medical applications. The design of a medium access control is a challenge due to the characteristics of wireless channel and the need to fulfill both requirements of mobility support and energy efficiency.  This paper presents a comparative study of IEEE 802.15.6, IEEE 804.15.4 and T-MAC in order to analyze the performance of each standard in terms of delay, throughput and energy consumption. Keywords: Biomedical, IEEE 802.15.6; T-MAC, IEEE 802.15.4, mobility, low-power communication, wireless body sensor networks, implantable sensors, healthcare applications, biosensors

Performance evaluation of wake-up radio based wireless body area network

Abstract. The last decade has been really ambitious in new research and development techniques to reduce energy consumption especially in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Sensor nodes are usually battery-powered and thus have very limited lifetime. Energy efficiency has been the most important aspect to discuss when talking about wireless body area network (WBAN) in particular, since it is the bottleneck of these networks. Medium access control (MAC) protocols hold the vital position to determine the energy efficiency of a WBAN, which is a key design issue for battery operated sensor nodes. The wake-up radio (WUR) based MAC and physical layer (PHY) have been evaluated in this research work in order to contribute to the energy efficient solutions development. WUR is an on-demand approach in which the node is woken up by the wake-up signal (WUS). A WUS switches a node from sleep mode to wake up mode to start signal transmission and reception. The WUS is transmitted or received by a secondary radio transceiver, which operates on very low power. The energy benefit of using WUR is compared with conventional duty-cycling approach. As the protocol defines the nodes in WUR based network do not waste energy on idle listening and are only awakened when there is a request for communication, therefore, energy consumption is extremely low. The performance of WUR based MAC protocol has been evaluated for both physical layer (PHY) and MAC for transmission of WUS and data. The probabilities of miss detection, false alarm and detection error rates are calculated for PHY and the probabilities of collision and successful data transmission for channel access method Aloha is evaluated. The results are obtained to compute and compare the total energy consumption of WUR based network with duty cycling. The results prove that the WUR based networks have significant potential to improve energy efficiency, in comparison to conventional duty cycling approach especially, in the case of low data-reporting rate applications. The duty cycle approach is better than WUR approach when sufficiently low duty cycle is combined with highly frequent communication between the network nodes

FOTA-MAC: A Novel Traffic Adaptive MAC Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Recently, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have emerged as a significant breakthrough in the healthcare sector due to their immense potential to revolutionize health outcomes. This type of network is able to support a diverse range of applications with traffic rates ranging from several bits per hour up to 10 megabits per second. The challenge lies in accommodating this wide range of applications and meeting their distinct requirements using a single suitably flexible medium access control protocol. In response to this challenge, our paper proposes a novel Traffic Adaptive MAC protocol designed specifically for the regular traffic of WBANs. This innovative protocol dynamically adapts its operation based on the observed traffic, leading to significant efficiency gains compared to the standardized MAC protocols IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6. Our contribution aims to address the critical need for a tailored and adaptive MAC protocol that can seamlessly handle varying traffic loads within WBANs. By incorporating our protocol, we envision enhanced communication efficiency and improved performance, unlocking new possibilities for healthcare applications and ultimately revolutionizing the healthcare industry

TraPy-MAC: Traffic Priority Aware Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Body Area Network

Recently, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has witnessed significant attentions in research and product development due to the growing number of sensor-based applications in healthcare domain. Design of efficient and effective Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is one of the fundamental research themes in WBAN. Static on-demand slot allocation to patient data is the main approach adopted in the design of MAC protocol in literature, without considering the type of patient data specifically the level of severity on patient data. This leads to the degradation of the performance of MAC protocols considering effectiveness and traffic adjustability in realistic medical environments. In this context, this paper proposes a Traffic Priority-Aware MAC (TraPy-MAC) protocol for WBAN. It classifies patient data into emergency and non-emergency categories based on the severity of patient data. The threshold value aided classification considers a number of parameters including type of sensor, body placement location, and data transmission time for allocating dedicated slots patient data. Emergency data are not required to carry out contention and slots are allocated by giving the due importance to threshold value of vital sign data. The contention for slots is made efficient in case of non-emergency data considering threshold value in slot allocation. Moreover, the slot allocation to emergency and non-emergency data are performed parallel resulting in performance gain in channel assignment. Two algorithms namely, Detection of Severity on Vital Sign data (DSVS), and ETS Slots allocation based on the Severity on Vital Sign (ETS-SVS) are developed for calculating threshold value and resolving the conflicts of channel assignment, respectively. Simulations are performed in ns2 and results are compared with the state-of-the-art MAC techniques. Analysis of results attests the benefit of TraPy-MAC in comparison with the state-of-the-art MAC in channel assignment in realistic medical environments

A game theory control scheme in medium access for wireless body area network

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has been considered for applications in medical, healthcare and sports fields. Although there are several protocols for wireless personal area networks, specific features and reliability requirements in WBAN bring new challenges in protocol design. An appropriate control scheme in the MAC layer can make a significant improvement in network performance. Based on traffic priority and prior knowledge this paper proposes a game theoretical framework to smartly control access in contention period and contention free period as defined in IEEE 802.15.6 standard. The coordinator controls access probability of contention period based on users' priority in CSMA/CA and allocates suitable slots with strategies for best payoff based on link states in guaranteed time slots (GTS). The simulation results show the improved performance especially in heavily loaded channel condition when the optimal control mode is applied

A Study of Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks

The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive lightweight sensor nodes have contributed to the development of a proactive and unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN provides long-term health monitoring of a patient without any constraint on his/her normal dailylife activities. This monitoring requires low-power operation of invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes. In other words, a power-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is required to satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements including low-power consumption. In this paper, we first outline the WBAN requirements that are important for the design of a low-power MAC protocol. Then we study low-power MAC protocols proposed/investigated for WBAN with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. We also review different power-efficient mechanisms for WBAN. In addition, useful suggestions are given to help the MAC designers to develop a low-power MAC protocol that will satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 7 table

New Contact Sensorization Smart System for IoT e-Health Applications Based on IBC IEEE 802.15.6 Communications

[EN] This paper proposes and demonstrates the capabilities of a new sensorization system that monitors skin contact between two persons. Based on the intrabody communication standard (802.15.6), the new system allows for interbody communication, through the transmission of messages between di erent persons through the skin when they are touching. The system not only detects if there has been contact between two persons but, as a novelty, is also able to identify the elements that have been in contact. This sensor will be applied to analyze and monitor good follow-up of hand hygiene practice in health care, following the ¿World Health Organization Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care¿. This guide proposes specific recommendations to improve hygiene practices and reduce the transmission of pathogenic microorganisms between patients and health-care workers (HCW). The transmission of nosocomial infections due to improper hand hygiene could be reduced with the aid of a monitoring system that would prevent HCWs from violating the protocol. The cutting-edge sensor proposed in this paper is a crucial innovation for the development of this automated hand hygiene monitoring system (AHHMS).This research was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, grant number DPI2016-80303-C2-1-P.Hernández, D.; Ors Carot, R.; Capella Hernández, JV.; Bonastre Pina, AM.; Campelo Rivadulla, JC. (2020). New Contact Sensorization Smart System for IoT e-Health Applications Based on IBC IEEE 802.15.6 Communications. Sensors. 20(24):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20247097S117202

A survey on wireless body area networks: architecture, security challenges and research opportunities.

In the era of communication technologies, wireless healthcare networks enable innovative applications to enhance the quality of patients’ lives, provide useful monitoring tools for caregivers, and allows timely intervention. However, due to the sensitive information within the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), insecure data violates the patients’ privacy and may consequently lead to improper medical diagnosis and/or treatment. Achieving a high level of security and privacy in WBAN involves various challenges due to its resource limitations and critical applications. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of the WBAN technology is provided, with a particular focus on the security and privacy concerns along with their countermeasures, followed by proposed research directions and open issues

Diseños de capa cruzada para redes inalámbricas de área corporal energéticamente eficientes: una revisión

RESUMEN: El diseño de capa cruzada se considera una poderosa alternativa para dar solución a las complejidades introducidas por las comunicaciones inalámbricas en redes de área corporal (WBAN), donde el modelo clásico de comunicaciones no ha exhibido un desempeño adecuado. Respecto al problema puntual de consumo de energía, hemos preparado la presente revisión de las publicaciones más relevantes que tratan la eficiencia energética para WBAN usando diseño de capa cruzada. En este artículo se proporciona una revisión exhaustiva de los avances en aproximaciones, protocolos y optimizaciones de capa cruzada cuyo objetivo es incrementar el tiempo de vida de las redes WBAN mediante el ahorro de energía. Luego, se discute los aspectos relevantes y deficiencias de las técnicas de capa cruzada energéticamente eficientes. Además, se introducen aspectos de investigación abiertos y retos en el diseño de capa cruzada para WBAN. En esta revisión proponemos una taxonomía de las aproximaciones de capa cruzada, de modo que las técnicas revisadas se ajustan en categorías de acuerdo a los protocolos involucrados en el diseño. Una clasificación novedosa se incluye para hacer claridad en los conceptos teóricos involucrados en cada esquema de capa cruzada y para luego agrupar aproximaciones similares evidenciando las diferencias con otras técnicas entre sí. Nuestras conclusiones consideran los aspectos de movilidad y modelamiento del canal en escenarios de WBAN como las direcciones para futura investigación en WBAN y en aplicaciones de telemedicina.ABSTRACT: Cross-layer design is considered a powerful alternative to solve the complexities of wireless communication in wireless body area networks (WBAN), where the classical communication model has been shown to be inaccurate. Regarding the energy consumption problem, we have prepared a current survey of the most relevant scientific publications on energy-efficient cross-layer design for WBAN. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the advances in cross-layer approaches, protocols and optimizations aimed at increasing the network lifetime by saving energy in WBANs. Subsequently, we discuss the relevant aspects and shortcomings of these energy-efficient cross-layer techniques and point out the open research issues and challenges in WBAN cross-layer design. In this survey, we propose a taxonomy for cross-layer approaches to fit them into categories based on the protocols involved in the cross-layer scheme. A novel classification is included to clarify the theoretical concepts behind each cross-layer scheme; and to group similar approaches by establishing their differences from the other strategies reviewed. Our conclusion considers the aspects of mobility and channel modeling in WBAN scenarios as the directions of future cross-layer research for WBAN and telemedicine applications