Abstract

Introduction: A Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN) implements wearable devices interconnected with each other and connected to a central monitor acting as a Base Station. Ensuring data security and secure communication is challenging due to resource constrained environment. Secure communication is ensured with cryptography which requires good key generation techniques.

Objective: A biometrics-based cryptographic key generation using Electrocardiogram (ECG) is proposed. The focus of this work is to use biometric for securing the data transmission in WBASN and not for biometric-based authentication.

Methods: Walsh–Hadamard transform (WHT) is used for feature extraction. After the features are generated, a stable key generation mechanism generates a stable cryptographic key to secure the data transmission. Based on the distinguishability degree, a transformed feature contributes one or more bits of information during the cryptographic key generation. The generated key has an enlarged space due to which the key is more secure.

Results: Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed biometric authentication system performs satisfactorily with low FAR and FRR. Results reveal that the suggested method achieves improved security with energy savings.

Conclusion: The work includes a generic method for distinguishable feature generation, as well as a stable key generation mechanism ECG signals.

Keywords: Wireless body area sensor network (WBASN), secure communication, cryptography, biometrics, cryptographic key generation.

Graphical Abstract