Survey and benchmark of lightweight block ciphers for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

For security applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), choosing best algorithms in terms of energy-efficiency and of small memory requirements is a real challenge because the sensor networks must be autonomous. In (Eisenbarth et al., 2012; Law et al., 2006), the authors have benchmarked on a dedicated platform some block-ciphers and have deduced the best candidates to use in the context of small embedded platforms. This article proposes to study on a dedicated platform of sensors most of the recent lightweight block ciphers as well as some conventional block ciphers. First, we describe the design of the chosen block ciphers with a security summary and we then present some implementation tests performed on our platform.