Influence of Encryption Algorithms on Power Consumption in Energy Harvesting Systems

Autonomous energy harvesting sensors present one of the most attractive areas of microelectronics at the moment. They are a part of Internet of Things (IoT) systems so the data need to be protected across transmission. One way for data protection is encryption and the other way is digital signature. However, energy consumption of those systems is increased using protections algorithms, and it should be considered because these are energy harvesting systems. The paper describes the ways in which data encryption and digital signature algorithms can be implemented in resource limited systems based on an 8-bit microcontroller. Alongside the implementation method, the paper deals with the energy demands of the selected encryption algorithms and digital signatures. The execution time, energy consumption, and memory consumption will be considered.