COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LIGHTWEIGHT CRYPTOGRAPHY ALGORITHMS FOR MEDICAL SENSOR NETWORKS: PERFORMANCE, ENERGY, AND SECURITY ANALYSES

Abstract

Medical sensor networks are rapidly transforming healthcare delivery through continuous remote monitoring of physiological signals; yet, the sensitive nature of patient data demands robust security mechanisms that must operate within severe resource constraints. While lightweight cryptography offers a viable security solution for such resource-constrained environments, no systematic comparative study has evaluated leading algorithms specifically under medical sensor network operating conditions. Existing work either tests limited algorithm sets against generic Internet of Things (IoT) metrics or proposes single hybrid schemes without cross-algorithm comparison. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative evaluation of seven lightweight cryptography algorithms - PRESENT, KASUMI, ASCON, SIMON, SPECK, LED, and GIFT - across eight performance and security metrics: throughput, power consumption, energy per bit, RAM footprint, ROM footprint, encryption latency, security level, and healthcare regulatory compliance. Evaluations were conducted on an ARM Cortex-M4 platform under ECG and EEG transmission workloads representative of real medical sensor deployments. Results demonstrated that ASCON and GIFT provided the most favourable balance of security strength and energy efficiency for wearable medical sensors, while PRESENT remains most suitable for ultra-constrained implantable devices. The study further introduced a healthcare compliance scoring rubric aligned with HIPAA and ISO/IEEE 11073, providing medical IoT system designers with evidence-based algorithm selection guidance.