Title: Comparative performance and energy consumption analysis of different AES implementations on a wireless sensor network node

Authors: Fan Zhang; Reiner Dojen; Tom Coffey

Addresses: Data Communications Security Laboratory, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. ' Data Communications Security Laboratory, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. ' Data Communications Security Laboratory, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Abstract: Many of the diverse Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications, such as home automation, traffic control and medical patient monitoring, have a strong requirement for the confidentiality of sensing data. At the same time, the restricted resources of WSN nodes demand that applications are implemented as efficiently as possible. Recently, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has been proposed as the preferable symmetric cipher for WSN applications. This paper presents a performance and energy consumption analysis of three AES implementations on a wireless sensor node. For each implementation the memory requirements, the execution time and the energy consumption are monitored. The results of the presented analysis show that while the hardware-supported AES is faster than the software implementations, it is less energy efficient due to increased power requirements of the additional hardware.

Keywords: WSN; wireless sensor networks; energy efficiency; cryptography; MicaZ sensor node; AES; advanced encryption standard; performance analysis; energy consumption.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2011.042767

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2011 Vol.10 No.4, pp.192 - 201

Received: 23 Jul 2010
Accepted: 17 Jun 2011
Published online: 04 Oct 2011 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article