Energy efficient elliptic curve point multiplication for WSN applications

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN's) are resource constrained networks, demanding energy efficient cryptographic algorithms in order to extend security to them. When compared with the popular RSA algorithm, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) offers similar level of security with smaller key size requirements. An efficient implementation of ECC heavily relies on the scalar multiplication operation. An efficient method for the elliptic curve point multiplication operation is proposed and its resource requirements are compared with binary and non-adjacent form (NAF) techniques. While comparing these, addition and doubling operations are considered. The proposed scalar multiplication technique makes use of both affine and projective coordinate systems while carrying out addition and doubling operations. The number of computations required to perform these operations is compared and an appropriate coordinate system is chosen for each of the operations.