Evaluation of a Fast Symmetric Cryptographic Algorithm Based on the Chaos Theory for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are being more and more considered for critical applications where security issues are a priority. Security protocols are based on complicated algorithms that are very time consuming. The limited processing capabilities of sensor nodes make these protocols even more time consuming. Security algorithms based on the theory of chaos have been introduced in order to reduce the complexity of cryptographic operations. A novel chaos based algorithm aiming at enhancing the security robustness has been proposed for wireless sensor networks. On the other hand, a version of the well known AES algorithm has been adopted by various wireless sensor networks standards such as ZigBee, WirelessHART and ISA100.11a, for it is considered as a reliable and robust algorithm. In this paper, we evaluated both algorithms on TelosB motes and prove that the chaos based algorithm is much faster than the AES based algorithm and still achieve the same cryptography quality.