ASIC and FPGA Comparative Study for IoT Lightweight Hardware Security Algorithms

Data security, privacy and authenticity are crucial in wireless data transmission. Low power consumption is the main requirement for any chip design targeting the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this research paper, a comparative study of eight authenticated encryption and decryption algorithms, selected from the “Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability and Robustness” (CAESAR), namely, ACORN, ASCON, CLOC, JOLTIK, MORUS, PRIMATEs, SCREAM and SILC, is presented. The FPGA and ASIC implementations of these eight algorithms are synthesized, placed and routed. Power, area, latency and throughput are measured for all algorithms. All results are analyzed to determine the most suitable algorithm for IoT applications. These results show that ACORN algorithm exhibits the lowest power consumption of the eight studied at the expense of lower throughput and higher latency. MORUS algorithm gives the highest throughput among the eight selected algorithms at the expense of large area utilization.