Security is critical to a wide range of wireless data applications and services. While several security mechanisms and protocols have been developed in the context of the wired Internet, many new challenges arise due to the unique characteristics of battery powered embedded systems. In this work, we focus on an important constraint of such devices -battery life -and examine how it is impacted by the use of security protocols. We present a comprehensive analysis of the energy re uirements of a wide range of cryptographic algorithms that are use% as building blocks in security protocols. Furthermore, we study the energy consumption re uirements of the most popular transport-layer security rotocol S S I (Secure Sockets Layer). To our knowledge, this is the &st comprehensive analysis of the energy requirements of SSL. For our studies, we have developed a measurement-based expenmental testbed that consists of an iPAQ PDA connected to a wireless LAN and running Linux, a PC-based data acquisition system for real-time current measurement, the 0 enSSL im lementatLon of the SSL protocol, and arametrizable S& client an8server test programs. We investigate t l ! e impact of various parameters at the protocol level (such as cipher suites, authentication mechanisms, and transaction sizes, etc.) and the cryptographic algorithm level (cipher modes, strength) on overall energy consumption for secure data transactions. Based on our results, we discuss various opportunities for realizing energy-efficient implementations of security protocols. We believe such investigations to be an important first step towards addressing the challenges of energy efficient security for battery-constrained systems.
Recently, Potlapally et. al REF analyzed the energy requirements of a wide range of cryptographic algorithms used as building blocks in security protocols such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
Analyzing the energy consumption of security protocols