A Survey of Wearable Devices Pairing Based on Biometric Signals

With the growth of wearable devices, which are usually constrained in computational power and user interface, this pairing has to be autonomous. Considering devices that do not have prior information about each other, a secure communication should be established by generating a shared secret key derived from a common context between the devices. Context-based pairing solutions increase the usability of wearable device pairing by eliminating any human involvement in the pairing process. This is possible by utilizing onboard sensors (with the same sensing modalities) to capture a common physical context (e.g., body motion, gait, heartbeat, respiration, and EMG signal). A wide range of approaches has been proposed to address autonomous pairing in wearable devices. This paper surveys context-based pairing in wearable devices by focusing on the signals and sensors exploited. We review the steps needed for generating a common key and provide a survey of existing techniques utilized in each step.