A Quantum-Entropy-Based AES Framework for Energy-Efficient and Post-Quantum Secure IoT Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

– The rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) applications has led to the large-scale deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that incessantly generate and transmit sensitive data over wireless networks. Although the current mostly used symmetric encryption algorithm for securing such networks is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the advent of quantum computing threatens the long-term security of AES, as well as the weaknesses inherent to the key generation, distribution, and lifecycle management. This research paper proposes a Quantum Enhanced AES framework for IoT based WSNs which integrates the use of Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) based high entropy key generation, key injection against side channel attacks and dynamic session-based rekeying. Compared with classical AES and two state-of-the-art security frameworks based on quantum computing, i.e., QKD-assisted AES scheme and lightweight post-quantum security hybrid AES framework, the proposed scheme increases the entropy of the key by about 20% (from 0.82 to 0.99), and lowers the key exposure risk by more than 60% by using session-based rekeying. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can achieve up to 8 to10% higher throughput and 22% lower end-to-end delay than post-quantum AES schemes, and also prolongs the network lifetime by almost 15% under realistic IoT-WSN workloads. The framework maintains and does not alter the AES standard compliance and does not make any changes to the AES core, thus it ensures practical applicability. These results show that the proposed approach offers a good quantum resilience with low performance and energy overhead, which is suitable for long-lived and security-critical IoT-WSN deployment