Capacitive communication using human body as a electrical channel has attracted much attention in the area of personal area networks (PANs) since its introduction by Zimmerman in 1995. The reason being that the personal information and communication appliances are becoming an integral part of our daily lives. The advancement in technology is also helping a great deal in making them interesting,useful and very much affordable. If we interconnect these body-based devices with capacitive communication approach in a manner appropriate to the power, size, cost and functionality, it lessens the burden of supporting a communication channel by existing wired and wireless technologies. More than that, using body as physical communication channel for a PAN device compared to traditional radio transmission seems to have a lot of inherent advantages in terms of power and security etc. But still a lot of feasibility and reliability issues have to be addressed before it is ready for prime time. This promising technology is recently sub-classified into body area networks (BAN) and is currently under discussion in the IEEE 802.15.6 Task Group for addressing the technical requirements to unleash its full potential for BANs. This could play a part in Ericsson's envision of  50 billion connections by 2020. This thesis work is part of the main project to investigate the models, interface and derive requirements on the analog-front-end (AFE) required for the system. Also to suggest a first order model of the AFE that suits this communication system.In this thesis work the human body is modeled along with interfaces and transceiver to reflect the true condition of the system functioning. Various requirements like sensitivity, dynamic range, noise figure and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) requirements are derived based on the system model. An AFE model based on discrete components is simulated, which was later used for proof of concept. Also a first order AFE model is developed based on the requirements derived. The AFE model is simulated under the assumed interference and noise conditions. The first order requirements for the submodules of the AFE are also derived. Future work and challenges are discussed.

Orientador: Aleardo Junior Manacero / Banca: Maurício Araújo Dias / Banca: Marcos Antônio Simplício Júnior / Resumo: O desenvolvimento de tecnologias móveis tem criado oportunidades para uso de aplicações remotas executando em dispositivos como smartphones. Para algumas dessas aplicações é essencial que a autenticação seja feita de modo seguro e eficiente. Nesse sentido surge o uso da tecnologia NFC (Near Field Communication) para obter segurança para transações executadas em aplicativos móveis. Esse tipo de aplicação é bastante interessante para a realização de comércio eletrônico, bem como controle de acesso a informações sigilosas, como dados bancários, por exemplo. Neste trabalho, apresentam-se dois protocolos para fazer a autenticação de dispositivos através de etiquetas NFC, com técnicas de criptografia assimétrica usando algoritmos de curvas elípticas. Ao longo do texto são apresentados os principais conceitos sobre NFC, criptografia e a classe de web services REST (Representational State Transfer), que serve como padrão para a construção dos protótipos dos protocolos Protecting Touch aqui desenvolvidos. Os detalhes sobre a implementação desses protocolos são também apresentados, assim como resultados de experimentos para sua avaliação / Abstract: The appearance of mobile technologies created opportunities for remote applications running in devices such as smartphones. In some of these applications it is essential that authentication have to be performed in a secure and ecient way. In this sense the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) technology came to provide safety to transactions executed through mobile applications. This kind of application is rather attractive to perform electronic commerce, as well as access control for sensitive data, such as banking accounts. In this work it is presented two protocols for user authentication through NFC tags, using asymmetric cryptography by elliptic curves. Throughout the text we present the main concepts about NFC, cryptography and the web services REST (Representational State Transfer), which is used as the building framework for the prototypes of the Protecting Touch protocols presented here. Details about the protocols implementation are also presented, as well as results from the evaluation experiments of these protocols / Mestre

Near field communication (Nfc), a contact-range and short-lived message exchange technology, has in recent years become popular in relation to payment-cards, key-cards and ski-passes. With the release of, in particular, the Google Nexus S, which is capable of reading and writing Nfc tags as well as exchanging messages between devices by touch, the roles of consumers have changed from carriers of passive cards to that of active readers. This publicly available hardware technology, embedded into relatively cheap connected smartphones, creates a new field of possibilities in which a complete and complex Nfc-based system can be developed solely by means of software. In this thesis work, the research is in relation to the field of Nfc, ranging from the physical characteristics of the technology to the design of the Nfc API on the Android platform. Nfc-based apps, library and systems are designed, developed and evaluated in terms of performance. The Android apps which are implemented are WiFi and Bluetooth connectors as well as an Nfc-sensor value visualizer. Additionally, two full systems are developed which consists of an Android app, backend server, database and web or PC-client frontend. These two systems are: a web-based high-performance live statistical visualizer of Nfc sensor values and an Nfc-scan based product endorsement, Like-event, presenting the picture and name of a user endorsing a product on the in-store advertisement displays on top of the ads. The system for scanning, distributing and presenting statistics on sensor-values from a specially crafted NfcV-enabled sensor is evaluated in terms of performance along the chain of events starting at the Nfc tag introduction and being dispatched on the mobile phone and ending with the calculations and plot-generation carried out by the browser connected to the backend via a WebSocket. The evaluations show that in a use-case in which the user holds a tablet in one hand and an Nfc-enabled smartphone in the other, the user would experience a mean-delay of 515 milliseconds between putting the device against an NfcV-sensor and seeing the statistical plot, containing the last 1000 values, updated in the browser on the tablet. Additionally, the user would experience a mean-delay of 74 milliseconds between the values being presented on the mobile device itself until they are presented on the tablet in the case of constant streaming from an NfcV connected sensor. The conclusion is that this delay of 74 milliseconds is sufficiently low for the user to feel that the devices are tightly coupled, making it natural to pay attention to the tablet when scanning sensors. Possible use-cases for this include a technician walking between built-in passive NfcV sensors on the factory floor or a nurse walking between patients wearing bandages with built-in passive health-sensors. Finally, the work is discussed in terms of ethics and social impact as development in the tele-healthcare field continues, and a set of Nfc-based applications are suggested including Nfc-tags for interactive product customization, company car management and app deployment.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) have the potential to greatly affect every part of industrial and people’s lifestyle. For this reason, iPack VINN Excellence Center contributes to wireless tracking platform for fresh food and lifestyle. Every new idea or technology is attempted to integrate to the WSN for more efficient, better user experience and lower power consumption. Meanwhile Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range wireless connectivity technology, which can make communication easily,safety and intuitively arousing iPack interest. So this master thesis focus on integrating NFC technology into existing systems to build a NFC-enable Wireless Sensor Network system. And with thissystem, only one simple touch, data from sensor node can be transmitted to mobile phone or tablet. Furthermore parameters of sensor node also can be configured easily by using above devices. So basically the NFC peer-to-peer communication protocol is mainly used. To implement and test the functions of the demonstration, a sets of hardware is needed to chosen and bought. How to design the system without changing old WSN is very tricky. To design a NFC adapter which can connect existing WSN with NFC part is thesolution of this thesis. So the main task was designing a NFC adapter which could be connected with either mobile phone/tablet or sensor node. It was the NFC adapter that makes mobile phone/tablet or sensor node NFC enabled. For the connection method, the high speed UART interface was chosen to connect with sensor node. The architecture of NFC adapter includes two main parts, A NFC chip (PN532) from NXP and a MCU(VNC2) from FTDI. The PN532 uses its antenna to send or receive data with different NFC protocols. The VNC2 is used to store sensor collected data and sends command though UART to control the PN532. Learning to use the PN532 was a tough task during the thesis work. Both official manuals and demo application are helpful for understanding the PN532 controlling. In addition, We analysed the sniffer data from demo application and code from NXP software design kit (SDK). which helped us to know the process of the PN532 peer-to-peer communication. After learning from official application, user manual and monitoring software/hardware design kid applications, we began to design our own hardware suitable SDK for the NFC adapter. At first we connected the hardware parts. When hardware connection was ready, we wrote and tested the firmware for VNC2 platform. Then due to the reason that Windows is more stable than our build VNC2 platform system at that moment, we wrote our own software design kid for NFC adapter under Windows OS first. The basic idea of software design kid is easy to use, modify and integrate into any other platforms. At the end of the thesis project, we integrated our own SDK into VNC2. When integration was done, a lot of stability and performance validation were done. Based on the result of testing, we optimized and modified our SDK and tested it again. This thesis project basically handles out a new ideal of integrating NFC to existing wireless sensor network to make WSN NFC enable. To prove the idea, we made a demo to show the enhanced sensor node and the results are satisfied. However there still has a lot of works and a lot of improvement should can be done in the future.

Over the past decades, technological advancements have made everyday objects smart, and naturally, these developments have reached the packaging industry too. Packaging equipped with sensors and chips can provide new experiences to its customers and one of the technologies that has shown its potential to contribute to this is Near Field Communication (NFC). Previous implementations of NFC in product packaging were limited to higher-end products. However, production costs of the chips have dropped substantially and has led to more adaptations. With more and more products using the technology, more consumers will get exposed to NFC- enabled packaging. Generation Z is one of those consumer groups. Thus, this study aimed to explore how NFC technology embedded in product packaging can influence the user experience for Generation Z and their relationships with brands. To achieve this goal, a qualitative approach was implemented, and 5 semi-structured interviews were conducted to get an understanding of the members of the generation’s view on NFC-enabled packaging. Emerging themes included added value, brand image, ease of use, right product, and environmental concerns. The findings from this study revealed the potential of NFC-embedded packaging and highlights the benefits it can provide to Generation Z but also several pain points and considerations.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is being used more frequent in smart devices, this raises security concerns whether the users information is secure from attackers. The thesis examines the threats that NFC on Android smartphones are exposed to, its countermeasures, as well as existing protocols that ensures the integrity and confidentiality of the users data. The results were achieved by a literature study, a questionnaire sent to companies that create products related to the subject as well as an experiment that was divided into two parts. The first part examined what information can be extracted from a debit card stored on an Android smartphone. The second part included a relay attack in which a purchase would be made with a victim’s debit card by using Android smartphones. The results shows that it is difficult to conduct any attack on the smart devices because of the limited range of NFC as well as the protocols available for making purchases with debit cards stored on smart devices disallows unauthorized applications and hardware to attack cards stored in smart devices.

This dissertation evaluates the design of several defense schemes for wireless medical devices to address security issues. These schemes are designed to enable efficient and effective access control of wireless medical devices in both non-emergency and emergency situations. In recent years, the range of available wireless medical devices has increased and includes cardiac pacemakers, insulin pump, defibrillators, cochlear implants, neurostimulators, and various drug delivery systems. Unfortunately, most existing wireless medical devices lack sufficient security mechanisms to protect patients from malicious attacks. Thus, with the rise in use of medical implants, security becomes a critical issue as attacks on wireless medical devices may harm patients. Security on wireless medical devices is a relatively new field, which has not been thoroughly researched yet. The authors of a lot of articles have proposed token based, certification based and proximity based schemes to address the issue. However, most of the current solutions have many limitations and cannot be widely applied. Therefore, better solutions are needed. In order to address this issue, we design a novel and multiple-layer access control framework for wireless medical devices. In a low layer level, we utilize bi-channel technology and multi-factor authentication to defend against various attacks at wireless medical devices. Our system utilizes near field communication (NFC) to do device pairing and uses the medical device's wireless radio to perform remote programming. This approach defends against most attacks because our NFC pairing scheme guarantees that the successful communication range between the programmer and wireless medical devices is less than 6cm. When the patient is in a crowded area such as on public transportation, a different person's mobile devices and the patient's medical devices may be located less than 6cm apart; we use the patient's cell phone to detect such an environment. To avoid attacks in crowded areas, we design a scheme to detect such a situation using the patient's cell phone. User involvement is used on non-implantable medical devices (IMDs) and a patient access pattern based access control (PAPAC) scheme is used on IMDs. We also design a response time based scheme to defend against fake patient attacks. Our analyses and experiments show that the protection schemes are efficient and effective. In a high layer level, we design patient infusion pattern based access control (PIPAC) scheme for wireless medical devices. Specifically, insulin pumps are most widely applied wireless medical devices. The pump parameters and doses can be adjusted by anyone with an easily obtained USB device. The hacker can deliver a lethal dose without knowing the device's serial number in advance. To address this issue, we propose a PIPAC for wireless insulin pumps. This scheme employs a supervised learning approach to learn normal patient infusion patterns in terms of the dosage amount, rate, and time of infusion, which are automatically recorded in insulin pump logs. The generated regression models are used to dynamically configure a safe infusion range for abnormal infusion identification. Our proposed algorithms are evaluated with real insulin pump logs used by several patients for up to 6 months. The experimental results demonstrate that our scheme can reliably detect a single overdose attack with a success rate up to 98\% and defend against a chronic overdose attack with a very high success rate. For IMDs in non-emergency case, the PAPAC scheme we design utilizes the patient's IMD access pattern to address resource depletion (RD) attacks. It is a novel support vector machine (SVM) based scheme. This SVM based scheme is very effective at defending against RD attacks. Our experimental results show that the average detection rate is above 90\%. For IMDs in emergency cases, we design a novel biometrics based two-level secure access control scheme that utilizes a patient's biometrics to prevent unauthorized access to the IMD. The scheme consists of two levels: level-one employs a patient's some basic biometrics and is lightweight; level-two uses a patient's customized iris data to achieve effective authentication. The experimental results show that our IMD access control scheme is very effective and has small overhead in terms of battery, CPU and memory. Thus, it is suitable for IMDs. Both the false acceptance rate (FAR) and false rejection rate (FRR) are close to zero with a suitable threshold. Protecting wireless medical devices is a very challenging task due to their extremely limited resource constraints. It is necessary to balance the overhead of security schemes and security requirements. In this dissertation, we will first discuss security vulnerabilities in wireless medical device systems. Then we will present our framework using smart phones and other technologies, such as near field communication based access control. Further, we will describe the detailed design of this framework. Finally, extensive experiments show that our schemes can achieve good performance with small overhead. / Computer and Information Science

For the first time ever, mobile payments in Sweden have overtaken cash as the preferred method of payment when it comes to monthly payments. With cashless payments growing in Sweden and all over the world it is clear that mobile payment methods are going to increase in our everyday lives. As elders tend to have more difficulties learning and understanding software, it is not unlikely that this will affect the adoption of mobile payment methods. As cash is rapidly disappearing as a payment method in Sweden it is important to gain insight into which factors affect the acceptance of mobile payment methods among senior citizens, as they are the most frequent users of cash today. This is a qualitative case study where five seniors have been interviewed about their opinions on mobile payments based on a theoretical model of mobile adoption consisting of eleven variables. The interviews came to center around the Swedish mobile payment application Swish as it was the only mobile payment service that the participants were aware of and had experience using. The study’s goal is to gain knowledge of what variables are of importance to the senior consumers when deciding whether or not to adopt a mobile payment system. The main findings of the study are that the variables: social influence, attractiveness of alternatives and trust are the variables that have been seen to affect the senior citizens' adoption of mobile payment the most.

This work focuses on cryptographic protocol with privacy protection. The work solves the question of the elliptic curves and use in cryptography in conjunction with authentication protocols. The outputs of the work are two applications. The first application serves as a user and will replace the ID card. The second application is authentication and serves as a user authentication terminal. Both applications are designed for the Android operating system. Applications are used to select user attributes, confirm registration, user verification and show the result of verification.

V této práci vytváříme jednoduchý systém pro rychlou textovou komunikaci (IM), který využívá technologii Near-Field Communication (NFC) ke zlepšení bezpečnosti a soukromí. V první části zkoumáme samotnou technologii NFC. Poté se věnujeme možnostem NFC v operačním systému Android pro chytrá mobilní zařízení a také existujícím aplikacím, které tyto možnosti využívají. Rovněž zkoumáme nejmodernější přístup k bezpečnému IM, zejména Signal Protocol a jeho open-source implementaci pro Android. Dále pak navrhujeme IM systém, který používá Signal Protocol pro šifrování zpráv a NFC pro výměnu kryptografického materiálu, aniž by vyžadoval použití telefonních čísel nebo důvěryhodnou třetí stranu. Nakonec předkládáme vzorovou implementaci klientské i serverové aplikace a zhodnocení vlastností tohoto systému z hlediska soukromí a bezpečí.