Double threshold authentication using body area radio channel characteristics

Zhao, N., Ren, A., Hu, F., Zhang, Z., Ur Rehman, M. , Zhu, T., Yang, X. and Alomainy, A. (2016) Double threshold authentication using body area radio channel characteristics. IEEE Communications Letters, 20(10), pp. 2099-2102. (doi: 10.1109/LCOMM.2016.2597831)

Abstract

The demand of portable and body-worn devices for remote health monitoring is ever increasing. One of the major challenges caused by this influx of wireless body area network (WBAN) devices is security of user's extremely vital and personal information. Conventional authentication techniques implemented at upper layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model usually consumes huge amount of power. They also require significant changes at hardware and software levels. It makes them unsuitable for inherently low powered WBAN devices. This letter investigates the usability of a double threshold algorithm as a physical layer security measure in these scenarios. The algorithm is based on the user's behavioral fingerprint extracted from the radio channel characteristics. Effectiveness of this technique is established through experimental measurements considering a variety of common usage scenarios. The results show that this method provides high level of security against false authentication attacks and has great potential in WBANs.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61301175), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Project Funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Postdoctoral Research Projects Funded in Shaanxi Province.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ur Rehman, Dr Masood
• Authors: Zhao, N., Ren, A., Hu, F., Zhang, Z., Ur Rehman, M., Zhu, T., Yang, X., and Alomainy, A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
• Journal Name: IEEE Communications Letters
• Publisher: IEEE
• ISSN: 1089-7798
• ISSN (Online): 1558-2558
• Published Online: 03 August 2016
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2016 IEEE
• First Published: First published in IEEE Communications Letters 20(10):2099-2102
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy