To meet the application requirements in high-level security scenarios (i. e.

military

national security and banks)

and further enhance the security for user authentication protocol in wireless sensor network (WSN)

the biometric-based three-factor user authentication protocol (BTh-UAP) is proposed. For defending against the node compromise attack

the simulated attack

the man-in-the-middle attack and the privileged-insider attack in Althobaiti protocol

the smart card and password are taken as its basic secure factors

and the biometric identification that is operated by the biometric identification information generation and reply function is introduced as additional secure factor. In key management

a unique shared key for each node combined with gateway node is delivered to guarantee the independence and security in authentication phase. The shared key between user and gateway node is autonomously chosen to improve the security of the common communication channel. Furthermore

in the circumstance for non-participation of node

the updating scheme for password and biometric identification is designed to achieve the freshness. The results demonstrate that BTh-UAP not only overcomes Althobaiti's security flaws

but also its requirements for computing capability are less than the public-key encryption via using the Dolev-Yao threat model analysis and AVISPA's OFMC simulation. The tradeoff between security and computing costs indicates that BTh-UAP can be applied in high-level security scenarios for resource-constrained wireless sensor network.