ALARM-Net
From Capsil Wiki
ALARM-Net (30) - "Assisted-Living and Residential Monitoring Network for pervasive, adaptive healthcare" is a MicaZ-on-Tiny OS based wireless sensor network for assisted-living and residential monitoring. It was developed at the University of Virginia by Stankovich et al. It integrates environmental and physiological sensors in a scalable, heterogeneous architecture. The syatem features context-aware power management, dynamic privacy policies, and data association. Communication is secured end-to-end to protect sensitive medical and operational information.
ALARM-NET monitors environmental and physiological data of individuals in their residences, with focus on the assisted-living and medical domains. Unlike other systems, ALARM-NET incorporates a Circadian Activity Rhythm (CAR) (which is 24 hour routine of activity of a person) nalysis module that learns the patterns of daily life of the individuals, and influences the system and network protocols for power management and privacy. For example, the dynamic privacy configuration rules change on the fly when an individual exhibits a behavior that is critical to his health and enable the authorized medical personnel to access vital data, which is otherwise hidden or available for anonymous statistical purposes only. Additionally, CAR enables advanced power management by anticipating which sensors should be kept active and which can be temporarily disabled in order to conserve power according to the habits of the individual. A very neat aspect is the querying feature which allows appropriate people (doctors, nurses etc) to access the information subject to enforced privacy rules.
Privacy
The Privacy Manager resides in the AlarmGate application and has three main functional components: the Context Manager, the Request Authorizer, and the Auditor.
Context Manager: Collects and maintains the context objects about users and the environment from different analysis modules in the system. Request Authorizer: Queries received at the Query Manager are forwarded to the Request Authorizer which makes access decisions by consulting the system's privacy policies and context objects of the query subject. After each access request is decided at the Request Authorizer, it is recorded by the Auditor module. Auditor: Maintains a trace of access requests in an audit trail, including the authorization decision made for each request (granted or denied).
Security
Access to an AlarmGate by user interfaces is limited to legitimate users of the system, who must authenticate themselves before being allowed to continue. Queries for sensor data are authorized according to administratively configured privacy policies and context. After a client connects and authenticates, communication between it and the AlarmGate on the IP network is encrypted whenever sensor data is reported. Messages sent and received to/from the WSN by the AlarmGate must also be secured, using message authentication codes (MACs) and encryption and privacy policies and context. Finally, the connection to the back-end database must also be resistant to attacks, a common requirement and one that is addressed by commercially available programs.
The actual sensor network security is provided by SecureComm, a link-layer security suite was developed at University of Virginia for MICAz and Telos motes and employs AES type encryption.
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