Lightweight Cryptography for Energy-Conscious Authentication in IoT Systems
Ashwag Alotaibi, Huda Aldawghan, Mounir Frikha · International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications · 2025
The proliferation of IoT devices has introduced new challenges in ensuring secure communication while maintaining computational and energy efficiency. Traditional cryptographic mechanisms such as AES-128, although robust, often fail to meet the stringent constraints of resource-limited IoT environments. This research investigates lightweight cryptographic algorithms and energy-conscious authentication protocols as viable alternatives for enhancing security in IoT systems. A comprehensive performance evaluation is conducted through the simulated implementation of three widely used algorithms—AES-128, SPECK, and PRESENT—measuring encryption time, decryption time, memory consumption, and ciphertext size. The results reveal critical trade-offs between security strength and resource usage, highlighting SPECK’s balanced performance and PRESENT’s ultra-low resource footprint. A Multi-Metric Suitability Analysis framework is introduced to assess overall applicability across different IoT use cases. The study provides evidence-based insights to guide algorithm selection for secure yet efficient IoT deployments. Future directions include hardware-based testing, integration into IoT protocols, and exploration of post-quantum lightweight cryptographic approaches. The findings contribute to the development of practical, scalable, and energy-efficient security architectures tailored for the next generation of IoT systems.