An efficient and secure certificateless authentication protocol for healthcare system on wireless medical sensor...

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Biomedical Engineering
• Cybersecurity

Background:

• Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) enable real-time patient monitoring but face significant security and privacy challenges.
• Transmitting sensitive physiological data requires robust access control and protection against unauthorized access and attacks.
• Existing authentication protocols in WMSNs often incur high computational and communication overhead, limiting their practicality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel certificateless authentication scheme for WMSNs that enhances security and patient anonymity.
• To develop a protocol that minimizes computational and communication costs compared to existing solutions.
• To ensure the practical applicability of the proposed scheme in healthcare systems.

Main Methods:

• A certificateless authentication scheme was designed, specifically avoiding the use of bilinear pairing.
• The protocol integrates patient anonymity features within the authentication process.
• Security and performance evaluations were conducted to compare the proposed scheme against related protocols.

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme provides strong security guarantees, including protection against various network attacks.
• It achieves patient anonymity, safeguarding sensitive health information.
• The protocol demonstrates lower computation and communication costs compared to existing authentication schemes.
• Performance evaluations indicate a higher degree of practicality for healthcare WMSNs.

Conclusions:

• The developed certificateless authentication scheme offers a secure, efficient, and practical solution for wireless medical sensor networks.
• It effectively addresses the critical challenges of patient privacy and system security in healthcare.
• The protocol's reduced overhead makes it suitable for resource-constrained WMSN environments.