Benchmarking block ciphers for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The energy efficiency requirement of wireless sensor networks (WSN) is especially high because the sensor nodes are meant to operate without human intervention for a long period of time with little energy supply. Besides, available storage is scarce due to their small physical size. Therefore choosing the most storage- and energy-efficient block cipher for WSN is important. However to our knowledge so far no systematic work has been conducted in this area. We have identified the candidates of block ciphers suitable for WSN based on existing literature and authoritative recommendations. We have benchmarked these candidates and based on this benchmark, we have selected the suitable ciphers for WSN, namely Rijndael for high security and energy efficiency requirements; but MISTY1 for good storage and energy efficiency. In terms of operation mode, we recommend output feedback mode for static networks, but counter mode for dynamic networks.