Studying the Effects of Most Common Encryption Algorithms

Wireless networks play critical roles in present wor k, home, and public places, so the needs of protecting of such networks are increased. Encryption algorithms play vital roles in information systems sec urity. Those algorithms consume a significant amount of computing resources such as CPU time, memory, an d battery power. CPU and memory usability are increasing with a suitable rates, but battery technology is increasing at slower rate. The problem of the slower increasing battery technology forms "battery gap". The design of efficient secure protocols for wireless devices from the view of battery consumption needs to understand how encryption techniques affect the consumption of battery power with and without data transmission. This paper studies the effects of six of the most common symmetric encryption alg orithms on power consumption for wireless devices. at different settings for each algorithm. These setting include different sizes of data blocks, different data types (text, images, and audio file), battery power consumption, different key size, different cases of transmission of the data , effect of varying signal to noise ratio and finally encryption/decryption speed.The experimental results show the superiority of two encryption algorithm over other algorithms in terms of the power consumption, proc essing time, and throughput .These results can aid in new design of security protocol where energy efficiency is the main focus. Some suggestions for design of secure communications systems to handle the varying wireless environment have been provided to r educe the energy