Analysis of energy consumption of RC4 and AES algorithms in wireless LANs

Encryption algorithms are known to be computationally intensive. They consume a significant amount of computing resources such as CPU time, memory, and battery power. A wireless device, usually with very limited resources, especially battery power, is subject to the problem of energy consumption due to encryption algorithms. Designing energy efficient security protocols first requires an understanding of and data related to the energy consumption of common encryption schemes. In this paper, we provide the results of experiments with AES and RC4, two symmetric key algorithms that are commonly suggested or used in WLANs. Our results show that RC4 is more suitable for large packets and AES for small packets.