E-SAP: Efficient-Strong Authentication Protocol for Healthcare Applications Using Wireless Medical Sensor Networks

Sensors

Pardeep Kumar²  Sang-Gon Lee¹ 

[1] Division of Computer & Information Engineering, Dongseo University, San 69-1, Jurye-2-Dong, Sasang-Gu, Busan 617-716, Korea; E-Mail:;Department of Ubiquitous-IT, Graduate School of Design & IT, Dongseo University, Sasang-Gu, Busan 617-716, Korea; E-Mail:

关键词: medical sensor network;    secure healthcare;    user authentication;    mutual authentication;    session key establishment;    smart card;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s120201625

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A wireless medical sensor network (WMSN) can sense humans’ physiological signs without sacrificing patient comfort and transmit patient vital signs to health professionals’ hand-held devices. The patient physiological data are highly sensitive and WMSNs are extremely vulnerable to many attacks. Therefore, it must be ensured that patients’ medical signs are not exposed to unauthorized users. Consequently, strong user authentication is the main concern for the success and large scale deployment of WMSNs. In this regard, this paper presents an efficient, strong authentication protocol, named E-SAP, for healthcare application using WMSNs. The proposed E-SAP includes: (1) a two-factor (i.e., password and smartcard) professional authentication; (2) mutual authentication between the professional and the medical sensor; (3) symmetric encryption/decryption for providing message confidentiality; (4) establishment of a secure session key at the end of authentication; and (5) professionals can change their password. Further, the proposed protocol requires three message exchanges between the professional, medical sensor node and gateway node, and achieves efficiency (i.e., low computation and communication cost). Through the formal analysis, security analysis and performance analysis, we demonstrate that E-SAP is more secure against many practical attacks, and allows a tradeoff between the security and the performance cost for healthcare application using WMSNs.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland