Energy-Preserving NextG Cryptography for Power Constrained Devices

Principal Investigator: Khaled N. Khasawneh, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering, George Mason University

Co-Principal Investigator: Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering, George Mason University

Energy-Preserving NextG Cryptography for Power Constrained Devices Project Description:

Operating securely in constrained environments is one of the primary challenges facing the wide-scale deployment of low-power devices, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and other embedded systems on the edge of the internet. The problem is that the cryptographic algorithms used to secure interactions between well-provisioned desktop and server environments are computationally prohibitive for resource-poor, battery-operated IoT and 5G/NextG devices. As the number of battery-operated low-power devices is expected to reach 75 billion by 2025, it is essential to develop security solutions for them. 

In this project, researchers plan to develop novel techniques to allow low-power devices to overcome the challenges of lightweight cryptography to enhance the security of operations for NextG. Specifically, this project will investigate using energy harvesting to increase the device power budget and develop on device system optimizations as well as crypto offloading techniques to improve the energy efficiency of crypto operations.