A Lightweight And Secure Authenticated Encryption Design For Resource-Constrained Internet Of Things Devices

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) devices deployed in home and office environments operate under stringent constraints on memory, processing capability, and energy consumption, while increasingly handling sensitive sensor and multimedia data. Conventional cryptographic algorithms, although secure, often impose computational and memory overheads that are unsuitable for constrained platforms. Prior research introduced optimized symmetric encryption schemes and hybrid key-management approaches to improve efficiency for multimedia communication. More recently, standardization efforts have emphasized lightweight authenticated encryption as a practical requirement for IoT ecosystems.

This paper presents a design-centric IEEE-compliant study of a lightweight authenticated encryption framework for IoT devices, grounded in prior MAES and EMAES research and aligned with contemporary lightweight cryptography standards. The paper analyses design goals, security requirements, and implementation constraints, and proposes a configurable authenticated-encryption blueprint suitable for sensors, multimedia IoT nodes, and gateways. Comparative analysis tables and architectural illustrations are provided to position the proposed approach against existing schemes. A reproducible evaluation methodology using an existing multimedia dataset is outlined to assess efficiency, security, and feasibility. The study serves as a foundation for future implementation and experimental validation of lightweight encryption schemes in IoT environments.