An optimized encryption framework based on the modified-DES algorithm: A trade-off between security and throughput in wireless channels

Encryption is a vital process to ensure the confidentiality of the information transmitted over the insecure wireless channel. However, the nature of the wireless channel tends to deteriorate because of noise, interference and fading. Therefore, the encrypted transmitted signal will be received with some amount of error. Consequently, due to the strict avalanche criterion (SAC), this error propagates during the decryption process, resulting in half the bits (on average) after decryption to be in error. In order to alleviate this amount of error, smart coding techniques and/or new encryption algorithms that take into account the nature of wireless channels are required. On the other hand, these solutions might degrade the security of the information and the throughput of the wireless channel. In this paper, we propose a new encryption algorithm that uses an optimized framework for the throughput and security, we use computer simulations to analyze the effect of the proposed algorithm on the throughput. Moreover, we evaluate the security of the proposed algorithm in terms of its strength to applicable, well-known attacks. We show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the use of the same optimization framework over the variable length Rijndael algorithm and the fixed length 256-bit advanced encryption standard (AES).