On-demand key distribution for body area networks for emergency case

Recent growth in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has given rise to development of new and innovative medical applications. WSNs have occupied the medical area with immense benefits in reducing healthcare costs, doctor-patient efficiency, and enhanced openness for patients and healthcare professionals. Such sensors can be placed in or over a patient's body, forming a Body Area Network (BAN), to monitor the patient's health and vitalities. In these health monitoring applications, sensitive personal information is being transmitted over a network, thus, security needs to be embedded into the system from the start to guarantee privacy of the personal medical information. However, information security incurs additional overhead to the already resource-constrained BANs. This paper aims to provide a resource-efficient, scalable, and lightweight key management algorithm for cases of medical emergency, where a patient requires immediate medical assistance. The proposed key management algorithm securely establishes a key between a patient and the medical staff with minimal overhead without any prior knowledge of one another. The results show that the proposed scheme scales well with increasing number of nodes.