Enhancing WBAN Data Transmission: A Lightweight Approach With Fixed Binary Golomb Compression and Symmetric Mutual Authentication Protocol

ABSTRACT Wireless body area networks (WBAN) containing wearable sensing medical devices have enticed huge attention by providing high‐quality medical services to people without restraint in their day‐to‐day activities. WBAN monitors elderly people or patients suffering from any long‐lasting diseases from their place without being hospitalized, saving critical time transportation delays and admission costs. Wireless medical devices are attached or implanted in the human body to sense medical‐related data and further transmit it for medical services in an unsecured wireless medium. These sensing medical devices are miniature‐sized with a limited battery source, so energy should be exploited carefully. The sensing devices deplete their energy more during data transmission. Efficient energy exploitation and assuring data security and privacy in WBAN are highly recommended. Data to be transmitted from the sensing device are compressed before transmission to reduce the number of data transmissions and save energy. In this paper, to attain efficient energy exploitation, Lightweight Fixed Binary Golomb (LFBG) data compression is performed at each sensor before transmission, and further to guarantee the privacy and security of the data, Lightweight Symmetric Mutual Authentication (LSMA) protocol is implemented. The LFBG compression with the least computation saves up to 84% of energy, and LSMA with the least computation and transmission authenticates and also shares the session key securely.