Accurate modeling for predicting cryptography overheads on wireless sensor nodes

Resource constraints make it considerably difficult to implement and optimize cryptography algorithms on sensor nodes. In order to provide guidelines for design, it is necessary to predict overheads of these algorithms without final implementations and optimizations. In this paper, a mathematical model based on overheads of basic operations frequently used in cryptography algorithms is presented for predicting overheads of these algorithms. Simulation results of practical implementations of several popular algorithms verify that this model is very accurate. Because these basic operations cannot be ignored when implementing cryptography algorithms, the prediction results can be used as lower bounds of overheads. More importantly, as these basic operations are also elements of other applications such as data processing, their overheads can also be used to predict overheads of those applications using the same method.