Physically secure and fog-enabled lightweight authentication scheme for WBAN

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 30764 - 14
• Main Authors: Subramani, Jegadeesan, Rajasekaran, Arun Sekar, Balakrishnan, Arunkumar, Rao, G. Anantha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 21.08.2025; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/166; 692/700; Algorithms; Authentication protocols; Communication; Computer applications; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Security; Critical care; Data collection; Data privacy; Data processing; Decision making; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Fog computing; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; multidisciplinary; Physiology; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Security management; Sensors; Session key management; System resilience; Wearable Electronic Devices; Wireless body area network; Wireless Technology - instrumentation; Fog computing; Data privacy; Session key management; Wireless body area network; System resilience
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-16316-7

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are vital for healthcare, fitness monitoring, and remote patient care by means of combining sensors and wearable technologies for data collection and transmission. However, ensuring secure communication in WBANs remains a critical challenge and is generally insecure against the manipulation of data, breaches of privacy, and unauthorized access. Current authentication methods are vulnerable to security risks and have a significant computational burden. The above-said shortcomings are addressed by proposing a lightweight, physically secure, fog-enabled authentication scheme that guarantees data privacy and system resilience by integrating Physically Unclonable Functions ( ) and Fog Computing. This approach involves two phases: WBAN node registration and secure anonymous authentication. The proposed system incurs a reduction in computational overhead of 64.33% and communication overhead of 29.58% compared to existing protocols. Short-life session keys are used to achieve mutual authentication between WBAN sensors and monitoring devices. The proposed scheme is analyzed using BAN logic against attacks on impersonation, replay, and unauthorized access using BAN logic. Its practical effectiveness is confirmed via informal analysis, which shows that it is a scalable and efficient solution for practical WBAN environments.