Power and Area Oriented Implementations of Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks
Alexis Czezar Cruz Torreno, Maria Theresa de Leon, Marc Driz Rosales, Anastacia B. Alvarez · 2020
Security is a concern in wireless sensor networks, which are inherently prone to third party attacks. As such, cryptography is used to make a secure mode of communication among nodes and/or between nodes and base stations. However, conventional algorithms are resource-hungry and therefore not fit for small devices, hence the creation of a new category of cryptography known as Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms. These algorithms are still continuously being improved to fit in the decreasing sizes of small scale devices like FPGA-based wireless sensor networks. In this study, we quantify the effects of Data Width Reduction, and Round Unrolling on area, and power consumption. These are tested on three lightweight ciphers: LiCi, ANUII, and QTL. Data Width Reduction reduces area by using only a fraction of the original datapath. It was however found to be ineffective for the chosen ciphers, increasing area by 5.64%, 6%, and 9.2% in LiCi, ANUII, and QTL, respectively. Round Unrolling reduces latency which lessens the contribution of static power for each computation. Results show that round unrolling improves power efficiency by 25.97%, 3%, and 14% in LiCi, ANUII, and QTL, respectively. This comes at 299%, 414%, and 52% increase in area. The results allow newer and better lightweight ciphers to be further improved for small scale devices.