A Modified Fuzzy Vault Scheme for Biometrics-Based Body Sensor Networks Security

The fuzzy vault scheme, which has been most widely used in biometric systems, has some weaknesses while applied in securing Body Sensor Network (BSN) communications. This is mainly because of the dynamic random characteristics of biometric identifiers independently generated by sensor nodes based on self-captured physiological signals. A modified fuzzy vault scheme is proposed to overcome this problem, aiming for a significant reduction in recognition errors. Error-correction encoding/decoding process is deployed in a way different from the existing ones at the transmitter/receiver to reduce the effect of bit differences in dynamic random patterns between biometric identifiers. An enveloping process is further deployed before the projection of real points onto the keying material constructed polynomial to protect the real points from being revealed by various potential attacks. This enveloping process can also be deployed in the traditional fuzzy vault scheme to prevent the known attacks based on statistical analysis of points in the vault. A detailed performance analysis in terms of False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and False Rejection Rate (FRR), as well as anti-attack capability was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution.