The power consumption cost of data encryption in smartphones

This paper provides a performance evaluation of four different symmetric encryption algorithms in Android mobile platform. DES, Bluefish, RC6 and AES algorithms have been written and implemented in JAVA for Android platform utilizing an open source library called Bouncy castle. Different file sizes have been encrypted and power consumption has been measured. The results demonstrated that the cost of implementing these encryption algorithms in smartphones is high. Power consumption may prevent developers from utilizing encryption algorithms in their communication applications through smartphones. In addition, our results demonstrate the requirements of new power-saving `Green' encryption algorithms. Finally, encryption algorithms are not about security only, power should be one requirement in designing these algorithms for smartphones.