EVALUATION OF SYMMETRIC KEY ALGORITHMS FOR BODY SENSOR NETWORKS (BSN) ON RASPBERRY PI

Abstract

BSNs (Body sensor networks) have been widely implemented in medical environments. Monitoring the patient health and helping in fast and timely data access and transfer, BSNs pose a major reform in the field of medicine. There have been various techniques through which BSNs have been implemented, one being that using the Raspberry pi, a single board computer (SBC), which presented a new milestone in the field of sensor networks [15]. The data being sent over these sensor devices is critical and with increasing software attacks, comes the major challenge of providing a secure data transmission. The BSN implementation using the Raspberry pi incorporates the RC 4 encryption to establish a secure communication. But situations have been witnessed where RC4 does not suffice to the needs of the situation and in fact has detrimental overheads on the system. In this work, various symmetric key cryptography algorithms used in the BSNs has been segregated namely RC4, RC5, Blowfish, and Skipjack. An implementation of these algorithms has been carried out on the Raspberry pi. Further using available LINUX packages/utilities, a comparison of these algorithms has been laid forth as to find the most suited algorithm in a given situation. Also by simulating the values obtained for the algorithms on MATLAB, a proper graphical analysis of the entire work has been depicted. A situational comparison of these algorithms along with their weaknesses shown will help in segregating the use of these algorithms according to the need of the time and situation.