Wireless sensor networks (WSN) allow to exchange information and to take immediate and remote actions in natural, industrial, military or domestic environment systems. These networks are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, hence, they are vulnerable to being intercepted, interrupted or modified. However, for the last twenty years, the amount of information exchanged through communication networks around the world has considerably increased and thus its vulnerability. As a result, encryption algorithms are fundamental to protect information. In this context, security, performance and energy consumption become a paramount design factor for an engineer when designing and implementing WSNs. It is not an easy task to reach an optimal balance between these factors. In this paper, we evaluate three well-known symmetric encryption algorithms in an embedded development platform: the ARDUINO MEGA 2560. Our experiment measures the algorithms encryption average execution time and energy consumption. Additionally, we measure the impact of the channels of a small wireless sensor network with two nodes. The evaluation demonstrates the feasibility of implementing cryptographic algorithms in devices with limited resources such as memory, computing power and life span (energy consumption). Furthermore, the low impact on the network channels when comparing unencrypted communication vs encrypted communication evidence the potential of symmetric encryption algorithms.

中文翻译：

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无线传感器网络资源受限硬件中对称密码算法的性能评估


无线传感器网络 (WSN) 允许在自然、工业、军事或家庭环境系统中交换信息并采取即时和远程操作。这些网络很容易受到网络攻击，因此很容易被拦截、中断或修改。然而，在过去的二十年里，通过世界各地的通信网络交换的信息量大大增加，因此其脆弱性也随之增加。因此，加密算法是保护信息的基础。在此背景下，安全性、性能和能耗成为工程师在设计和实施无线传感器网络时最重要的设计因素。在这些因素之间达到最佳平衡并不是一件容易的事。在本文中，我们在嵌入式开发平台 ARDUINO MEGA 2560 中评估了三种著名的对称加密算法。我们的实验测量了算法加密的平均执行时间和能耗。此外，我们还测量了具有两个节点的小型无线传感器网络的通道的影响。该评估证明了在内存、计算能力和寿命（能耗）等资源有限的设备中实施密码算法的可行性。此外，在比较未加密通信与加密通信时，对网络通道的影响较小，这证明了对称加密算法的潜力。