title: Analysis of using interpulse intervals to generate 128-bit biometric random binary sequences for securing wireless body sensor networks.
abstract: Wireless body sensor network (WBSN), a key building block for m-Health, demands extremely stringent resource constraints and thus lightweight security methods are preferred. To minimize resource consumption, utilizing information already available to a WBSN, particularly common to different sensor nodes of a WBSN, for security purposes becomes an attractive solution. In this paper, we tested the randomness and distinctiveness of the 128-bit biometric binary sequences (BSs) generated from interpulse intervals (IPIs) of 20 healthy subjects as well as 30 patients suffered from myocardial infarction and 34 subjects with other cardiovascular diseases. The encoding time of a biometric BS on a WBSN node is on average 23 ms and memory occupation is 204 bytes for any given IPI sequence. The results from five U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology statistical tests suggest that random biometric BSs can be generated from both healthy subjects and cardiovascular patients and can potentially be used as authentication identifiers for securing WBSNs. Ultimately, it is preferred that these biometric BSs can be used as encryption keys such that key distribution over the WBSN can be avoided.
authors: Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Graduate University of CAS, Beijing, China. gh.zhang@siat.ac.cn
authors: Guang-He
authors: GH
authors: Zhang
authors: Carmen C Y
authors: CC
authors: Poon
authors: Yuan-Ting
authors: YT
authors: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003020:Clothing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D058998:Remote Sensing Technology / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted