An Electrocardiogram-Based Authentication Protocol In Wireless Body Area Network

In the past few years, the applications of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) have improved the ability of healthcare providers to deliver appropriate treatments to the patients either in hospitals or at homes. Precisely, biomedical sensors in a WBAN collect physiological signal from human’s body to enable remote, continuous and real-time network services. As the signal contains highly sensitive medical information about the patient and communicates through an open wireless environment, securing the information from unauthorized access and tampering are critically needed. One of the most crucial components to support security architecture in WBAN is its key management as it serves as the fundamental of authentication and encryption, but the overheads are enormous in dealing with key generation, exchange, storage and replacement. In response to such issue, the most promising solution for key management is the use of biometrics so that the involved parties can agree on a key to provide the authenticity of medical data in WBAN. However, the existing models are inappropriate to achieve optimal security performance and the required lightweight manners due to the sensor’s resource constraints in terms of power consumption and memory space. Therefore, this thesis presents a new authentication protocol model that utilizes Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal as biometric as well as cryptographic key to ensure that the transmitted data are originated from the required WBAN. The proposed model is developed and simulated on Matlab based on an improved fuzzy vault scheme with a lightweight error correction algorithm to reduce the computational complexity when compared to previous work. To validate the proposed ECG-based authentication protocol model, the FAR and FRR analysis is done and then followed by the complexity analysis. The result of FAR and FRR analysis demonstrates that choosing a definite degree and tolerance level can achieve optimal security performance required in WBAN communications. In complexity analysis, based on t-test, the result shows that there is a significant difference with 5% significant level in the computational complexity between the proposed authentication model and the previous protocol called ECG-IJS scheme and the proposed model requires fewer overheads in terms storage and communication overheads. To enhance the overall performance, this thesis also evaluates the uniqueness and the stability of ECG signal using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm respectively as the signal is applied as inputs of the proposed ECG-based authentication protocol model. The experimental result of ICA algorithm exhibits that each ECG signal is unique to each other as each signal is composed strongly from each different independent component and approximately zero relative to other independent components. While the result of FFT algorithm summarizes that the number of the common FFT peak location index for sensors on the same subject is significantly higher compared to the number of common feature for sensors on different subjects

Hybrid Spaces: Users\u27 Perceptions of Digitally Mediated Public Space

Public space has served as a central component to human settlement since the ancient Greeks, and a forum for unmediated discussion, communication, and debate (Hénaff & Strong, 2001; Mitchell 2003). During the industrialization of cities, public space continued to transform in form and typology, and has served society in various ways (Carr, Rivlin, Francis, & Stone, 1992). Public space is also a physical environment where interaction with digital environment occurs. Today, in the City of New York there are 503 privately owned public spaces (POPS) (Kayden, 2000); often these spaces provide varying levels of wireless access as public and/or private provisions. The role of new media and technology in physical space has captured the attention of many researchers in recent years (e.g. Manovich, 2001; Forlano, 2009; de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2012). As technology develops and becomes increasingly mobile and integrated within daily life, there is a need for researchers to also understand how this impacts the physical environment (Townsend, 2004; Forlano, 2009). Concurrently, recent literature suggests that urban public space, especially POPS, are increasingly regulated and controlled (Benton-Short, 2002; Miller, 2007; Németh & Schmidt, 2007, 2011); whereas new media technology continues to promote unmediated exchange and interaction (Manovich, 2001). Additionally, scholars have asserted that Internet access, because of its location within public space and the electronic connectivity it offers may have the ability to increase the overall use of public spaces (Hampton, Livio, & Sessions Goulet, 2010). Unfortunately, it is unclear how access to digital space within public space can affect public perception on the nature of these spaces. Forlano (2009) suggests that wireless networks can reconfigure people, places, and information in physical space. However, beyond the analysis of usage patterns there is little empirical research on how wireless technologies in public space can affect human behavior, interactions with the network, and human perceptions of these spaces and networks. Additionally, there is little research that examines the difference between device users and non-users within these environments. This study examines the role of Wi-Fi networks in five public spaces in Lower Manhattan, New York. A mixed methods approach pairs on-site observation with a survey that examines users\u27 perceptions of these spaces. Ultimately, this study contributes to a larger body of literature that discusses the \u27publicness\u27 of public space by including the role of new media and users\u27 behaviors in its current assessment. Findings demonstrate how access to digital media affects users\u27 perceptions of public space

A Hardware Platform for Communication and Localization Performance Evaluation of Devices inside the Human Body

Body area networks (BAN) is a technology gaining widespread attention for application in medical examination, monitoring and emergency therapy. The basic concept of BAN is monitoring a set of sensors on or inside the human body which enable transfer of vital parameters between the patient´s location and the physician in charge. As body area network has certain characteristics, which impose new demands on performance evaluation of systems for wireless access and localization for medical sensors. However, real-time performance evaluation and localization in wireless body area networks is extremely challenging due to the unfeasibility of experimenting with actual devices inside the human body. Thus, we see a need for a real-time hardware platform, and this thesis addressed this need. In this thesis, we introduced a unique hardware platform for performance evaluation of body area wireless access and in-body localization. This hardware platform utilizes a wideband multipath channel simulator, the Elektrobit PROPSimâ„¢ C8, and a typical medical implantable device, the Zarlink ZL70101 Advanced Development Kit. For simulation of BAN channels, we adopt the channel model defined for the Medical Implant Communication Service (MICS) band. Packet Reception Rate (PRR) is analyzed as the criteria to evaluate the performance of wireless access. Several body area propagation scenarios simulated using this hardware platform are validated, compared and analyzed. We show that among three modulations, two forms of 2FSK and 4FSK. The one with lowest raw data rate achieves best PRR, in other word, best wireless access performance. We also show that the channel model inside the human body predicts better wireless access performance than through the human body. For in-body localization, we focus on a Received Signal Strength (RSS) based localization algorithm. An improved maximum likelihood algorithm is introduced and applied. A number of points along the propagation path in the small intestine are studied and compared. Localization error is analyzed for different sensor positions. We also compared our error result with the Cramèr- Rao lower bound (CRLB), shows that our localization algorithm has acceptable performance. We evaluate multiple medical sensors as device under test with our hardware platform, yielding satisfactory localization performance

New media and the challenges of Boko Haram terrorism: proposing the adoption of human-wearable digital technology

The Boko Haram terrorism, which began in 2009 has had a devastating impact on the society. So far, it has triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises in history and has been responsible for over 30 thousand deaths with over two million others displaced, mostly in the North-east of the country with sizeable spillovers into the neighboring countries of Chad, Niger and Cameroon. Boko Haram’s primary goal was to create an Islamic caliphate in the region, and like other terrorist networks, uses the unconventional, hit-and-run guerrilla war tactics. This has rendered the insurgency to be a hard nut to crack, a phenomenon that is cited as one of the main reasons the group is able to continually carry out successful attacks despite being declared “technically defeated”. Hence, this need to seek for alternative, ‘unconventional’ media as a tool for counterterrorism. The media, both new and traditional have been shown to play a critical role toward the de-Bokoharamization campaign of the Nigerian Federal Government in collaboration with its Western partners. However, due to the guerrilla tactics nature of the insurgency, human-wearable digital microchip technology such as radio frequency identification and wireless body area network systems have been suggested as capable of yielding desirable outcomes. Following a critical review of literature and taking from Laswell’s communication model, this review article offers a digital communication counterterrorism model to complement the state’s efforts toward the anti-terrorism campaign

ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue Wireless Andrew Colleges Take to the Air Wireless LANs: Coming to a Campus Near You? Going Wireless for Last-Mile Connectivity Cutting the Wires: Wireless Research at Michigan Tech Communicating on a Beam of Light Remote Access at Amherst College Institutional Excellence Award: Michigan Technological University Interview Profile Columns Book Revie

Naming and discovery in networks : architecture and economics

In less than three decades, the Internet was transformed from a research network available to the academic community into an international communication infrastructure. Despite its tremendous success, there is a growing consensus in the research community that the Internet has architectural limitations that need to be addressed in a effort to design a future Internet. Among the main technical limitations are the lack of mobility support, and the lack of security and trust. The Internet, and particularly TCP/IP, identifies endpoints using a location/routing identifier, the IP address. Coupling the endpoint identifier to the location identifier hinders mobility and poorly identifies the actual endpoint. On the other hand, the lack of security has been attributed to limitations in both the network and the endpoint. Authentication for example is one of the main concerns in the architecture and is hard to implement partly due to lack of identity support. The general problem that this dissertation is concerned with is that of designing a future Internet. Towards this end, we focus on two specific sub-problems. The first problem is the lack of a framework for thinking about architectures and their design implications. It was obvious after surveying the literature that the majority of the architectural work remains idiosyncratic and descriptions of network architectures are mostly idiomatic. This has led to the overloading of architectural terms, and to the emergence of a large body of network architecture proposals with no clear understanding of their cross similarities, compatibility points, their unique properties, and architectural performance and soundness. On the other hand, the second problem concerns the limitations of traditional naming and discovery schemes in terms of service differentiation and economic incentives. One of the recurring themes in the community is the need to separate an entity\u27s identifier from its locator to enhance mobility and security. Separation of identifier and locator is a widely accepted design principle for a future Internet. Separation however requires a process to translate from the identifier to the locator when discovering a network path to some identified entity. We refer to this process as identifier-based discovery, or simply discovery, and we recognize two limitations that are inherent in the design of traditional discovery schemes. The first limitation is the homogeneity of the service where all entities are assumed to have the same discovery performance requirements. The second limitation is the inherent incentive mismatch as it relates to sharing the cost of discovery. This dissertation addresses both subproblems, the architectural framework as well as the naming and discovery limitations

The Extended Mind and Network-Enabled Cognition

In thinking about the transformative potential of network technologies with respect to human cognition, it is common to see network resources as playing a largely assistive or augmentative role. In this paper we propose a somewhat more radical vision. We suggest that the informational and technological elements of a network system can, at times, constitute part of the material supervenience base for a human agent’s mental states and processes. This thesis (called the thesis of network-enabled cognition) draws its inspiration from the notion of the extended mind that has been propounded in the philosophical and cognitive science literature. Our basic claim is that network systems can do more than just augment cognition; they can also constitute part of the physical machinery that makes mind and cognition mechanistically possible. In evaluating this hypothesis, we identify a number of issues that seem to undermine the extent to which contemporary network systems, most notably the World Wide Web, can legitimately feature as part of an environmentally-extended cognitive system. Specific problems include the reliability and resilience of network-enabled devices, the accessibility of online information content, and the extent to which network-derived information is treated in the same way as information retrieved from biological memory. We argue that these apparent shortfalls do not necessarily merit the wholesale rejection of the network-enabled cognition thesis; rather, they point to the limits of the current state-of-the-art and identify the targets of many ongoing research initiatives in the network and information sciences. In addition to highlighting the importance of current research and technology development efforts, the thesis of network-enabled cognition also suggests a number of areas for future research. These include the formation and maintenance of online trust relationships, the subjective assessment of information credibility and the long-term impact of network access on human psychological and cognitive functioning. The nascent discipline of web science is, we suggest, suitably placed to begin an exploration of these issues