A New Efficient Scheme for Securely Growing WBAN Nodes

Securely growing or de-growing nodes is a mandatory requirement to manage Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). This requirement raises significant challenges in node authentication, backward node authentication, initial node configuration, and node de-growth. Unlike the traditional approaches using pre-stored secrets or relying on special authentication hardware, we explore the characteristics of WBAN and wireless signal to develop an efficient scheme for adding/removing WBAN node securely and effectively. The major idea of the proposed scheme is to construct a 'virtual' dual-antennae proximity detection system by fully utilizing the existing legitimate nodes and the behavior of human body. We built a system prototype on wireless devices and verified our scheme through experiments. In addition, a data mining (clustering) algorithm is also applied to successfully detect newly joined legitimate node and identify potential attackers.