Performance evaluation and analysis of public-key schemes in embedded IoT devices

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered one of the emerging technologies that have attracted widespread attention from industry and academia as a result of their ability to use them in many applications, including military, healthcare, and industrial control. The inherent vulnerabilities in communications of IoT networks, which consist of resource-constrained devices, pose significant security challenges. To protect sensitive data exchanged within these networks, it is necessary to design and implement lightweight and efficient cryptographic schemes that consider resource-constrained IoT devices. This paper evaluates the performance of five well-known public-key schemes on three real-world IoT devices including IOTLAB-M3, Arduino-Zero, and Decawave DWM1001. The examined public-key schemes are categorized into two classes: integer factorization-based (RSA and Rabin schemes) and elliptic curve-based (ECIES, ECDH, and ECDSA schemes). By conducting comprehensive experiments, we compare these schemes in terms of computational time and energy consumption, providing valuable insights for selecting optimal public-key schemes in resource-constrained IoT environments.