Hybrid security mechanisms for wireless body area networks

Due to the emerging demands of medical equipment nowadays, the wireless body area network (WBAN) is imperative, but there are various security threats that disturb the development of it for the vulnerable nature of wireless channel. Security remains a formidable challenge yet to be resolved because the existing security structures for WSNs do not fully suit WBANs. In this paper, we discuss the security issues to WBANs and propose feasible hybrid security mechanisms to meet the security requirements of WBANs with strict resource constrains. We first introduce the recent advances of WBANs and analyze the main security risks to it, which makes it easy for WBANs to suffer from attacking than the other networks without resource constrains, and the security requirement of WBANs. Then we discuss the available cryptographic algorithms and propose a hybrid security structure for it. The proposed security mechanism provides a primitive to develop efficient and secure WBAN systems.