Chips, Vol. 3, Pages 216-228: Power Consumption Efficiency of Encryption Schemes for RFID

Chips, Vol. 3, Pages 216-228: Power Consumption Efficiency of Encryption Schemes for RFID

Chips doi: 10.3390/chips3030010

Authors: Mario Gazziro João Paulo Carmo

This paper provides a comparative analysis of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and Salsa20 algorithm implementations, focusing on power consumption efficiency in passive RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags and ultra-low-power devices. The main objective of this work is to determine which of these algorithms is more suitable to operate in these types of devices. For this purpose, ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) implementations of AES and Salsa20 based on low-power approaches were developed and their power consumption was evaluated. The results demonstrate that Salsa20 power consumption is lower than AES (about 17%), indicating that Salsa20 is a much better choice than AES for passive RFID tags.