A performance comparison of lightweight cryptographic algorithms suitable for IoT transmissions

Abstract

In the past decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged and has been of great importance in the digital world arousing the interest of the scientific community. The requirements of new small intelligent devices brought numerous security and privacy concerns. In order to secure the exchanged data through the IoT, integrity and authentication protocols are required and are usually constructed under hash functions. We notice that the most conventional cryptographic standards are not suitable for multiple platforms hardware/software. The expressed need is to construct lightweight functions and algorithms suitable for constrained environments including small devices. In this context, we propose a review of the research progress on IoT architecture. Further, we present and compare some selected lightweight cryptographic algorithms regarding security, performance, and resource requirements. The main goal of the present paper is to highlight the need to provide security systems for IoT applications through lightweight cryptographic mechanisms.