A survey: energy exhausting attacks in MAC protocols in WBANs

Because the sensors of wireless body area networks (WBANs) have limited battery power, many studies have focused on energy efficient medium access control (MAC) protocols to extend the lifetime of the sensors. In addition, WBANs face energy-exhausting attacks, which force the sensors to consume battery power partially or thoroughly. These attacks occur mainly in the MAC layer and threaten severely the energy efficiency of MAC protocols in WBANs. Because the attacks are made abruptly and unexpectedly, the lives of human beings and the quality of health care services can be threatened. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the major types of energy exhausting attacks in MAC protocols in WBANs, and show how easily the attacks can cause energy exhaustion in different MAC This paper was supported in part by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. 2011-0009454), and by Seoul R&BD Program (WR080951), and by Next-Generation Information Computing Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2012M3C4A7033345). M. Jo · L. Han · H. P. In ( ) Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University, 1, 5-ka, Anam-dong, Sungbuk-ku, Seoul, 136-701, Korea e-mail: hoh [email protected] M. Jo e-mail: [email protected] L. Han e-mail: [email protected] N. D. Tan Faculty of Information Technology, Hung Yen University of Technology Education, Vietnam e-mail: [email protected] protocols. This survey provides clues for future research into energy efficient MAC protocols in WBANs.