Authentication Techniques and Methodologies used in Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area network (WBAN), got the IEEE standard in February 2012, is the most significant and highly focused research area among researchers, academicians, and practitioners; applied to the patient's body for monitoring various physiological parameters and then the sensitive measured data is passed to the concerned medical doctor or server for taking the necessary actions. In order to pass the sensitive data securely, authentication is the first step towards it. The authentication schemes help network to reduce unwanted users and prevent from deceptions effectively since the authentication process identifies the user's identity that he or she claims to be. In connection to the safe communication, authentication is one of the key aspects. So, it is important to design novel authentication schemes; those offer secure authentication and prevent various security attacks in WBANs. A lot of methods and techniques have been proposed for authentication in WBANs. In this survey paper for improving the authentication process in WBANs, an overview of WBAN and their characteristics, various authentication types and classification of authentication schemes has been done. It further provides a complete comparison of different authentication schemes and highlights their pros, cons, limitations, challenges, performance evaluation and their robustness against different security attacks which open doors of new opportunities. This finally ends with the most significant open issues, future research directions and draw interesting conclusions.