Efficient implementation of pairing-based cryptography on a sensor node

Abstract

Pairing-based cryptography provides us many novel cryptographic applications such as ID-based cryptosystems and efficient broadcast encryptions. The security problems in ubiquitous sensor networks have been discussed in many papers, and pairing-based cryptography is a crucial technique to solve them. Due to the limited resources in the current sensor node, it is challenged to optimize the implementation of pairings on sensor nodes. In this paper we present an efficient implementation of pairing over MICAz, which is widely used as a sensor node for ubiquitous sensor network. We improved the speed of ηt pairing by using a new efficient multiplication specialized for ATmega128L, called the block comb method and several optimization techniques to save the number of data load/store operations. The timing of ηtpairing over GF(2239) achieves about 1.93 sec, which is the fastest implementation of pairing over MICAz to the best of our knowledge. From our dramatic improvement, we now have much high possibility to make pairing-based cryptography for ubiquitous sensor networks practical. Copyright © 2009 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.