International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 12, November, 2009 45 SEKEBAN (Secure and Efficient Key Exchange for wireless Body Area Network) Mohammed Mana 1 , Mohammed Feham 2 , and Boucif Amar Bensaber 3 1,2 STIC Lab., Department of telecommunications, University of Tlemcen Tlemcen, Algeria 3Department of Computer Science, university of Quebec Quebec, Canada 1 manamed_alg@yahoo.fr, 2 m_feham@mail.univ-tlemcen.dz, 3 Boucif.Amar.Bensaber@uqtr.ca Abstract Recent technological advances in sensors, low-power microelectronics and miniaturization, and wireless networking enabled the design and proliferation of wireless sensor networks capable of autonomously monitoring and controlling environments. One of the most promising applications of sensor networks is for human health monitoring. A number of tiny wireless sensors, strategically placed on the human body, create a wireless body area network (WBAN) that can monitor various vital signs, providing real-time feedback to the user and medical personnel. The wireless body area networks promise to revolutionize health monitoring. Since the sensors collect personal medical data, security and privacy are important components in this kind of networks (WBAN). It is a challenge to implement traditional security infrastructures in these types of lightweight networks, since they are by design limited in both computational and communication resources. A key enabling technology for secure communications in WBANs has emerged to be biometrics. In this paper, we present an approach which exploits physiological signals (electrocardiogram (ECG)) to address security issues in WBAN: a Secure and Efficient Key Exchange for wireless Body Area Network (SEKEBAN). SEKEBAN manages the generation and distribution of symmetric cryptographic keys to constituent sensors in a WBAN and protect the privacy. Keywords: Biometrics Security, ECG-generated keys, Wireless Body Area Network, Security and Privacy, key exchange. 1. Introduction The pervasive interconnection of autonomous and wireless sensor devices has given birth to a broad class of exciting new applications in several areas of our lives, with health care being one of the most important and rapidly growing one. The emergence of low-power, single-chip radios has allowed the design of small, wearable, truly networked medical sensors. These tiny sensors on each patient form a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Medical readings from sensors on the body are sent to servers at the hospital or medical centers where the data can be analyzed by professionals. These systems reduce the enormous costs associated to ambulant patients in hospitals as monitoring can take place in real-time even at home and over a longer period. Fig.1 [4] shows the general overview of a health care architecture. There are three main components: the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), the external network and the back-end server. The WBAN contains several sensors that