Energy Efficient Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN)

Abstract

Healthcare expenses are a growing concern in most countries. This has forced medical researchers to look for trusted and ambulatory health monitoring of patient's vital signs. The objective is to reduce patient visits and the use of medical and support staff for frequent examinations. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) consist of implanted, or worn, tiny health monitoring sensor nodes so that the vital body parameters and the movements of the patient can be recorded and communicated to the medical facilities for processing, diagnosis and prescription. WBAN is required to have small form and low power consumption. Reducing energy consumption of the sensor and communication equipment is one of the key research areas. It is also important for WBAN be secure, protected and reliable. Failure to acquire authentic and correct medical data may prevent a patient from being treated effectively, or even lead to wrong treatments. As patient identity can be obtained by correlating physiological information, privacy concerns must be addressed for wide acceptance of the technology. While security is paramount, the cost of implementing security techniques in WBAN may be prohibitive. It, therefore, becomes necessary to find cryptographic solutions that consume less energy. Research efforts are being made to reduce the cost of cryptography used in WBAN. In this paper authors discuss the current and future security solutions for low energy WBAN.