Preprocessed symmetric RSA authentication for wireless body area networks in space

Due to advances in microelectronics, embedded computing, and wireless communications, the interest in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) has risen sharply and has enabled the development and implementation of such networks [1]. However, the following problems exist: it is hard to implement security due to the many limitations on WBAN nodes, most available WBAN nodes require gravitational acceleration which limits the use of WBAN within special environments, such as space. One way to deal with security amongst WBAN is to secure by authentication. RSA is one of the popular encryption methods and is useful for message authentication possible to use within small scale networks. However, to use RSA in WBAN there are several problems to deal with, such as limitations within computational power and low communication rate [2]. Another problem to consider within special environments like space is the limited amount of electricity. In this paper, we propose a WBAN system that is usable in space with message authentication using preprocessed symmetric RSA (PSRSA). PSRSA allows nodes to have reliable RSA message authentication with a minimum impact on processing time. Providing user controllable pre-processing will generate more possible combinations to RSA encoded authentication messages. PSRSA can be expected to result in the reduction of a key size, up to 256 bits, while generating more total combinations compared to 1024 bit RSA without an impact on speed.