• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.16 no.7
• /
• pp.2225-2238
• /
• 2022

For advanced healthcare services, a variety of agents should maintain reliable connections with the manager and communicate personal health and medical information. The ISO/IEEE 11073 standards provide convenient interoperability and the optimized exchange protocol (OEP) supports efficient communication for devices. However, the standard does not specify secure communication, and sensitive personal information is easily exposed through attacks. Malicious attacks may lead to the worst results owing to service errors, service suspension, and deliberate delays. All possible attacks on the communication are analyzed in detail, and the damage is specifically identified. In this study, novel secure communication schemes over the 20601 OEP are proposed by introducing an authentication process while maintaining compatibility with existing devices. The agent performs a secure association with the manager for mutual authentication. However, communication with mutual authentication is not completely free from attacks. Message encryption schemes are proposed for concrete security. The authentication process and secure communication schemes between the secure registered agent (SRA) and the secure registered manager (SRM) are implemented and verified. The experimental analysis shows that the complexities of the SRA and SRM are not significantly different from those of the existing agent and manager.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.991-1013
• /
• 2020

E-health services have provided interoperability between personal health devices in personal area network, based the ISO/IEEE 11073 standard. In the healthcare system, the manager handles most agents concurrently through wireless communication. However, due to the distance limitation and the increased number of agents, it may be difficult to provide continuous connectivity. Recently, body area devices have been equipped with various applicable agents, which can even handle agents on behalf of the manager. A BAD may act as an intermediary device to increase system efficiency and performance. In this study, a device called "proxy", which can be installed as software on BAD devices, is proposed. The data measured by an agent can be sent to the proxy first, and subsequently be sent to the manager again. Agents and the manager are not aware of the proxy existence and work normally without the proxy. Furthermore, a new smart proxy and modified manager are proposed. The smart proxy acts as one agent handling measurement data from several agents, which can transmit a significant amount of data at once. The proxy and smart proxy maintain compatibility with existing devices that conform to the 20601 standard. The proposed schemes are verified and the complexities of devices are analyzed. The analysis shows no significant difference among the proxy, smart proxy, and manager. Simulations exhibit that the proposed schemes can improve the system performance.