Signature based Merkle Hash Multiplication algorithm to secure the communication in IoT devices

Abstract

Great extent of modernization in intelligent device automation and wireless sensor network have encouraged the augmentation of IoTs to interconnect millions of actual devices to the Internet with the help of sensors, actuators and communication technologies. IoT devices with the potential of pervasive sensing and quantifying ability, it becomes an essential segment of the future Internet. The sixth generation (6G) enabled IoT networks are predicted to transform the data sharing and communication for a future of thorough brilliant and sovereign systems. However, secure communication in a sensor network is very difficult and is more amplified by the use of latest 6G IoT technology which is vulnerable to different kinds of attacks due to their limited security features. Existing security systems like RSA and Elliptic curve cryptography which is based on large integer factors and the discrete logarithmic problem is vulnerable to the attack which emerges from quantum computers. The computing capacity of a quantum computer is higher than classical computers. A 30-qubit quantum computer has the equivalent computing capacity as a traditional silicon-based computer computes at 10 teraflops per second. To secure the communication in the present and future IoT network, an enhanced Hash-based Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) architecture named Signature-based Merkle Hash Multiplication (SMHM) algorithm is proposed. In the proposed scheme, the Hash-based Merkle signature algorithm is enhanced using the Bernoulli Karatsuba Multiplication algorithm to secure the data storage and communication in IoT devices. The FPGA based proposed model is implemented in the Xilinx ISE14.5 simulator, both Hardware Descriptive Language (HDL) and High-Level Synthesis (HLS) approach is used to calculate the performance metrics which improved 33% frequency, 22% area, power consumption up to 13%, 10% error and 15% delay.