Lightweight security algorithm for low power IoT devices

Abstract

In today's technology, ever increasing number of electronics applications require secure communication, for example the Internet of things devices. Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman (EC-DH) Algorithm has emerged as an attractive and effective public-key cryptosystem. Elliptic curves are widely used in various key exchange techniques that include the Diffie-Hellman Key agreement scheme. When contrasted with conventional cryptosystems like RSA, ECC offers equivalent security with smaller key sizes, which results in lower power consumption, speedier calculations, and also lower memory and transmission capacity (bandwidth) reserve. This is particularly valid and helpful for applications like IoT gadgets, which are regularly constrained regarding their CPU processing speed, power, and area. This work includes the software and hardware implementation of Diffie-Hellman, Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) Key agreement algorithm, and RSA algorithm. The proposed work also involves analysis of power, performance, area, and their comparisons thereof. The comparison is based on metrics obtained, after implementing the algorithms in synopsys using 90 nm UMC Faraday library. The ECDH algorithm is found to be better than others as far as power and area are concerned.