On the Use of Biometrics to Secure Wireless Biosensor Networks

The fast improvements in a variety of technologies such as microprocessing, sensing material, and most importantly wireless technology resulted in development of the wireless sensor network technology. Wireless sensors that can be either implantable inside the human body or wearable by individuals are called the wireless biosensors. The wireless biosensors are used to gather real time and continuous medical data from different parts of the human beings. This medical data is typically sent to an external sensor and then to its associated destination where data processing and a final decision is carried out. Due to nature of medical data and their usage, ensuring the security of this data is extremely important. There are several limitations associated with biosensor networks such as limitation in power, memory, computation capability, and communication rate which makes the wireless biosensor security a real challenging problem. These security challenges form substantial barriers for the wide adoption of the technology. Biometrics approach is an efficient way to overcome the insecurity of the wireless biosensor networks. In this paper, we will look at how biometrics has helped securing data in wireless biosensor networks, and present the remaining challenges to have a workable biometric-based security framework for wireless biosensor networks.