4.7 Challenges and Limitations
During our experiments, we encountered some
constraints that influenced our results. Firstly, we
were unable to run the algorithms without
dynamically allocating some data on the heap. Our
attempts to increase the stack size were unsuccessful,
which meant that certain memory allocations could
not be properly standardized across all algorithms.
For all the tests, the stacks were constant at 8.192
words (32.768 bytes). We would consistently allocate
the keys and signatures on the heap, but there would
still be insufficient stack memory. To solve that, we
inspected the key generation, verification and signing
methods to identify variables with significant
memory consumption. These variables were modified
to utilize dynamic memory allocation. This
introduced a minor inconsistency in the memory
measurements, making the comparisons less
accurate, as the different schemes may have been
allocated slightly more heap memory than necessary.
To improve this metric, an accurate measure of the
used stack memory would have to be conducted.
These inconsistencies mainly affected the memory
usage metrics rather than the timing results and still
provide insight into the memory requirements of the
algorithms.
For the timing metrics, most measurements were
reasonably accurate. The SPHINCS
+
algorithm
timings are slightly less so due to fewer
measurements being made because of the longer
runtime. Despite this, the observed variance for the
SPHINCS
+
timings was small enough to confidently
conclude that it is significantly slower than the other
alternatives. The limited flash memory of the device
made it difficult to easily set up a test environment for
signing larger files, constraining our ability to assess
performance of varying input sizes.
5 CONCLUSION
In this study, we evaluated the NIST-selected PQC
algorithms on a resource-constrained IoT device, the
LoRa ESP32. Our tests covered algorithms with
different NIST security levels to identify if high NIST
security levels for such devices were feasible. We
measured the latency and memory usage for each
algorithm. The algorithms that could be run locally
without excessive latency or memory usage was then
subsequently tested over Wi-Fi. Our finding indicates
that all version of the SPHINCS
+
scheme was too
slow to be practical for any use case on resource
constrained devices. Consequently, it was decided to
exclude it from tests over Wi-Fi and using it on a
resource constrained IoT devices does not seem
practical. From the second test it was shown that the
latency introduced from communicating over Wi-Fi
is insignificant, regardless of the choice of algorithm.
Conclusively, running PQC schemes on resource-
constrained IoT devices seem feasible, even when
using larger parameter sizes for increased security.
Specifically, Dilithium5 and Falcon1024 are good
candidates for schemes with high security even on
resource-constrained devices.
There are several areas for future work, that would
be significant and interesting to explore. Firstly,
evaluating PQC signature transmission over
LoRaWAN on the ESP32 microcontroller would
focus on latency and power consumption.
Furthermore, testing a specific scenario and
measuring more metrics, such as the stack memory
and energy dissipation, would create a more complete
picture of real-world use cases.
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