OTP-Q encryption and Diffie-Hellman mutual authentication for e-healthcare data based on lightweight S-WBSN framework

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Protection of wireless technology-enabled e-healthcare data transfer over constrained devices of body sensor networks using lightweight security mechanisms is the demand of health sector nowadays. OBJECTIVE: A new secure wireless body sensor network architecture (S-WBSN) with reduced CPU cycles and computational cost is proposed. S-WBSN uses OTP-Q (One-Time Pad-Quasi) and Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithms for encryption and mutual authentication, respectively. METHODS: To ensure mutual authentication among <WBSN, Local Processing Center (LPC)> and <WBSN, Data Server> components, the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm is used. Using the S-WBSN architecture, security requirements such as mutual authentication, and privacy preservation thwarting security attacks are perfectly met comparing other security-based research works on healthcare data monitoring. RESULTS: The one-time pad-based quasi-group algorithm is a stream block cipher that operates on the data observed from the sensors of the WBSN. Before transmitting encrypted data, authentication is to be established. CONCLUSION: The proposed system methodology proves to be efficient and consumes fewer CPU cycles. The encryption and decryption processing times are comparatively less than the state-of-the-art approaches.