Lightweight Post-Quantum Cryptographic Solutions for IoT: A Practical Approach
Mohammed Ibrahim El-Hajj · 2025
The pressing quantum computing threat mandates urgent adoption of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, yet existing lattice-based schemes remain impractical for resource-constrained edge devices. This paper presents a hardware-software codesign methodology that enables efficient NIST PQC Round 3 algorithms on commercial off-the-shelf IoT hardware. We implement Kyber-512 on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (ARM Cortex-A72) through three key optimizations: (1) cache-conscious polynomial multiplication reducing L1 misses by 46% versus reference implementations, (2) thermal-aware scheduling maintaining 63°C peak temperature (22°C below throttling threshold), and (3) memory compression techniques achieving 40% RAM reduction over classical McEliece implementations. Our experimental results demonstrate 78% of AES-128’s throughput at 1.3x energy cost while providing quantum resistance, quantifying the exact security-resource tradeoff through 18,000 thermal and 2.4M cache performance measurements. The design sustains 1,283 Kyber operations per joule, outperforming prior ARMv8 PQC implementations by 2.8x. These findings prove NIST Level 1 quantum security is achievable on legacy IoT hardware without hardware modifications, with our open-source framework enabling immediate adoption across 74% of Raspberry Pi 4 deployments using cryptographic services. This work provides concrete design guidelines and reference benchmarks for IoT manufacturers facing NIST’s 2024-2026 PQC standardization timeline.