Energy Consumption Analysis in Post Quantum Cryptography Using Multivariate Signature Algorithms

Classical cryptographic schemes in use today are based on the difficulty of certain number theoretic problems. Security is guaranteed by the fact that the computational work required to break the core mechanisms of these schemes on a conventional computer is infeasible; however, the difficulty of these problems would not withstand the computational power of a large-scale quantum computer. To this end, the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization process initiated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is well underway. In this paper, the energy consumption of PQC measurements are categorized based on their proposed cryptographic functionality. The results are used in order to identify the most energy-efficient schemes.