A versatile suite of strong authenticated key agreement protocols for body area networks

Authenticated key agreement protocols are increasingly being applied to wireless communications for initial security setup. They were, however, traditionally developed one by one without regard to the structural and computational differences between one protocol and another. This paper addresses a rising need for implementing, in a single device, multiple key agreement protocols authenticated with different means and hence suitable to a variety of device configurations. It presents three elliptic curve based key agreement protocols with authentication via hidden public key transfer, pre-shared password, and numerical display, and with only fractional variations from a common unauthenticated base protocol. It also analyzes their security. These protocols have been adopted into a new IEEE standard on wireless body area networks (BAN); they are applicable to other wireless networks as well.