Analytical Comparison of Cryptographic Techniques for Resource-Constrained Wireless Security

Abstract

With the widespread growth in applications for resourcelimited Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), the need for reliable and efficient security mechanisms for them has increased manifold but its implementation is a non-trivial task. Limitations in processing speed, battery power, bandwidth and memory constrain the applicability of existing cryptography Algorithms for WSNs. In this paper, two potential block ciphers, namely the RC5 and AES-Rijndael, are analyzed and their suitability for resourcelimited wireless network security are compared based on performance criteria such as computational complexity overhead and energy consumption. Using simulation tests and analytical models, we provide important analysis and considerations on practical feasibility of these cryptographic Algorithms in sensor networks to help designers predict security performance under a set of constraints for WSNs.