Towards green cryptography: A comparison of lightweight ciphers from the energy viewpoint

Abstract

We provide a comprehensive evaluation of several lightweight block ciphers with respect to various hardware performance metrics, with a particular focus on the energy cost. This case study serves as a background for discussing general issues related to the relative nature of hardware implementations comparisons. We also use it to extract intuitive observations for new algorithm designs. Implementation results show that the most significant differences between lightweight ciphers are observed when considering both encryption and decryption architectures, and the impact of key scheduling algorithms. Yet, these differences are moderated when looking at their amplitude, and comparing them with the impact of physical parameters tuning, e.g. frequency / voltage scaling. © 2012 International Association for Cryptologic Research.