A biometrics based security solution for encryption and authentication in tele-healthcare systems

Security and privacy are among the most crucial issues for data transmission in tele-healthcare applications. The paper proposes a biometrics based solution, combining encryption and authentication for wireless communication within a body sensor network (BSN), as well as between a BSN and a remote server (RS) of a tele-healthcare system. The method aims to use static and dynamic biometric traits to generate authentication and encryption keys respectively. Keys of 64 and 128 bits were generated from electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram of 9 subjects and fingerprint images of 20 subjects. The entropy of the keys ranged from 0.662 to 1 and the hamming distances between them were all non-zero. The results of this study found that random and distinctive keys can be generated by a biometric approach for encrypting and authenticating data in tele-healthcare systems.