Survey: Self-Empowered Wireless Sensor Networks Security Taxonomy, Challenges, and Future Research Directions

In the recent past, patient-wearable devices and implantable biosensors revealed exponential growth in digital healthcare, because they have the capability to allow access to information anywhere and every time to improve the life standard of multifarious disease-affected patients followed by healthy people. Following these advantages, digital healthcare demands a secure wireless communication infrastructure for interconnected self-empowered biosensor devices to maintain the trust of patients, doctors, pharmacologists, nursing staff, and other associated stakeholders. Several authentications, privacy, and data preservation schemes had been used in the literature to ensure the security of this emerging technology, but with time, these counteraction prototypes become vulnerable to new security threats, as the hackers work tirelessly to compromise them and steal the legitimate information of user’s or disrupt the operation of an employed self-empowered wireless sensor network (SWSN). To discuss the security problems of SWSN applications, in this review article, we have presented a detailed survey of the present literature from 2019 to 2022, to familiarize the readers with different security threats and their counteraction schemes. Following this, we will highlight the pros and cons of these countermeasure techniques in the context of SWSN security requirements to underscore their limitations. Thereafter, we will follow-up on the underlined limitations to discuss the open security challenges of SWSNs that need the concerned authorities’ attention. Based on this, we will pave a road map for future research work that could be useful for every individual associated with this technology. For the novelty and uniqueness of this work, we will make a comparative analysis with present survey papers published on this topic to answer the question of reviewers, readers, editors, and students why this article is in time and needed in the presence of rival papers.