A Novel ECG-based Dynamic Encryption Scheme for WBANs

Data security has become a critical issue limiting the rapid development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). Conventional encryption methods are considered not feasible for WBAN scenarios due to the complexity of the algorithms. Physiological signal-based encryption methods are believed to be potential solutions for WBANs due to the natural randomness of the data. However, physiological data has the drawbacks of high correlation and small key space within a short period. In this paper, a novel Electrocardiogram (ECG)based dynamic encryption scheme for WBANs is proposed. By utilizing the similarity of ECG features in various locations, a novel key distribution method based on security templates is proposed to synchronize the key seeds securely. Then, the designed multidimensional chaotic system dynamically generates key sequences by synchronizing key seeds among different nodes to en/decrypt the information in WBANs. The validation and analysis results demonstrate that the scheme has the advantages of large key space, high randomness and robustness, and low latency compared to the existing methods.