ANU-II: A fast and efficient lightweight encryption design for security in IoT

The paper proposes a new lightweight encryption design ANU-II which supports block length of 64 bits with a key size of 80/128 bits. ANU-II is modified and efficient version of existing lightweight cipher ANU [1]. The metrics which makes the ANU-II efficient as compared to ANU are memory size, latency, throughput and power. ANU-II outclasses the cipher ANU on all important design metrics. ANU II cipher design results in only 1852 bytes of Flash memory which is 20% less memory requirement than ANU cipher design. The ANU-II cipher design encrypts a 64-bit block of plaintext in 146.35 us which is very less as compared to ANU design which needs 1708.5us. ANU-II needs only 24mW of dynamic power while ANU cipher design on the same platform consumes 27mW of dynamic power. ANU-II design consists of a single S-Box, few shift operators and a couple of XOR gates. We believe that ANU-II design is the smallest lightweight design till date in terms of memory requirement, execution time and power consumption.

I. Introduction

Lightweight encryption design will prove to be a crusader in making technologies like IoT feasible [2]. The devices connected in IoT environment are resource constrained. Most of the devices in IoT environment operates on the 8-bit microcontroller which has very less flash and RAM memory. The devices thus connected to the external environment makes them vulnerable to external attacks. Data integrity and confidentiality must be provided to secure the node [3]. The ciphers like AES, triple DES will not be suitable to this constrained environment due to huge memory and power requirements [3]. Lightweight ciphers which have very fewer memory requirements and which results in very less power consumption is the only solution to make the devices secure connected in IoT environment. This paper proposes a new design ANU-II which is lightweight, fast and efficient as compared to other existing lightweight cipher designs.