Lightweight block ciphers for resource-constrained devices

Lightweight cryptography is a new branch of cryptography focused on providing security to resource-constraint devices such as wireless sensor networks (WSN), Radio-Frequency Identification (RFIDs) and other embedded systems. The factors considered in lightweight cryptography are mainly circuit area, memory requirement, processing time, latency, power, and energy consumption. This paper presents a discussion on common lightweight block ciphers in terms of different performance parameters, strength, design trends, limitations, and applications including the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) round 1 and 2 candidates. Analysis of these lightweight algorithms has offered an insight into this newly emerging field of cryptography.