Toward a trust management model for a configurable body sensor platform

Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) are used for diverse applications ranging from monitoring for medical purposes, sport coaching to computer gaming. This leads to viewing the BSN as an application platform and requires the capability to dynamically extend and configure BSN applications, including reprogramming the sensor nodes of the BSN. We propose a trust management model along with a component-based architecture to maintain the BSN as trustworthy platform under such changes in applications. With this model the trustworthiness can be autonomically evaluated and monitored at component, application, and system levels with respect to properties of security, dependability, and performance. The usage of the model is shown with an example of an ECG monitoring application.