In this paper, we presented a low-power, less area architecture of S-Box used in advanced encryption standard (AES) using programmable cellular automata (PCA). The proposed architecture performance in terms of security is evaluated using cryptographic properties such as nonlinearity, input/output entropy, correlation immunity bias, balancedness property, strict avalanche criterion, and it is found that the proposed method is secure enough for cryptography applications. The proposed architecture of AES with PCA-based S-Box is implemented on ASIC using TSMC 0.18-\({\upmu }\)m and UMC 0.13-\({\upmu }\)m CMOS technology libraries. Simulation studies show that the proposed architecture has average energy consumption of 58.702 nJ, power dissipation of 3.259 mW, area of 0.184 mm\(^2\), for TSMC 0.18-\({\upmu }\)m at 13.69 MHz and energy consumption of 18.275 nJ, power dissipation of 1.026 mW, area of 0.069 \({\upmu m}^{2}\) for UMC 0.13-\({\upmu }\)m at 13.69 MHz. The proposed architecture shows reduction in power dissipation by 83% and in energy consumption by 10% compared to the best classical S-Box and composite field arithmetic-based S-Box for AES algorithm. The S-Box using PCA is more flexible and dynamic in nature with low power, lesser energy consumption area and hence suitable for wireless body area network applications.