# Rapidly Deployable IoT Architecture with Data Security: Implementation and Experimental Evaluation
## 6 Conclusions  
Integrating heterogeneous IoT systems towards a modular architecture is a challenge. While there are many application-specific solutions for environmental monitoring, the majority are not integration friendly and often result in high deployment time. The broad nature of applications require a modular architecture that can be rapidly deployed. The proposed LiB IoT architecture provides a sensor hub for different environmental monitoring applications, classifies the IoT structure into functional layers and provides simple means of modularity between the layers. This research proposes a layer of protection between a wireless transceiver and internet gateway device against remote attacks by employing lightweight encryption algorithms and evaluates the impact on timing and energy consumption.  
Utilizing open-source off-the-shelf components and widely accepted encryption algorithms, this research presented a comparative study of multiple encryption algorithms to analyze the performance in memory, energy, and execution time. From the experimental evaluations, this research shows that energy efficiency and execution time of XTEA on a microcontroller without a dedicated AES hardware accelerator is almost on par with that of a device which has a crypto engine. Additionally, XTEA was around 60x more efficient in terms of power compared to a software implementation of AES on an 8-bit microcontroller while only taking 1/6 th of the program memory. From analyzing the performance of AES and XTEA on different architectures, it is clear that the encryption algorithm needs to be considered closely along with the IoT system architecture.  
Edge devices with abundant computational resources can implement AES in software with room for application firmware. However, as the majority of IoT applications utilize low-power edge devices, implementing AES becomes infeasible. Additionally, while a few 16-bit and 32-bit edge  
Figure 14: Average energy distribution chart of three applications.  
devices have dedicated hardware accelerators, the majority of 8-bit edge devices do not offer this peripheral feature. Without any encryption scheme, these edge devices are susceptible to malicious attacks. Accordingly, light weight encryption algorithms such as XTEA or SEA would be an ideal alternative to obtain an acceptable level of security, while at the same time reduce the deployment time. The efficiency of these algorithms has been evaluated through implementation on several IoT applications. Overall, the proposed LiB architecture takes a modular approach of designing IoT applications to address the challenges that lie in deploying a platform independent, scalable, secure and interoperable system.  
Formal analysis, S.M. and K.Y.; Funding acquisition, K.Y.; Methodology, S.M. and K.Y.; Project administration, K.Y.; Software, S.M.; Supervision, K.Y.; Validation, S.M. and K.Y.; Visualization, S.M. and K.Y.; Writing--original draft, S.M.; Writing--review & editing, K.Y. This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, grant number 1542368.  
[PERSON] helped with 3D designs and [PERSON] helped with printing the cases. The authors declare no conflict of interest.