Secure group formation protocol for a medical sensor network prototype

Designing security mechanisms such as privacy and access control for medical sensor networks is a challenging task; as such systems may be operated very frequently, at a quick pace, and at times in emergency situations. Understandably, clinicians hold extra unproductive tasks in low regard, and experience from user workshops and observations of clinicians at work on a hospital ward show that if the security mechanisms are not well designed, the technology is either rejected altogether, or they are circumvented leaving the system wide open to attacks. Our work targets the problem of designing wireless sensors to be both secure and usable by exploring different solutions on a fully functional prototype platform. In this paper, we present an Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) based protocol, which offers fully secure sensor set-up in a few seconds on standard (Telos) hardware. We evaluate this protocol´s time and energy consumption, and its impact on the battery lifetime.