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Leveraging AES Padding: dBs for Nothing and FEC for Free in IoT Systems

Jongchan Woo, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Benjamin D. Kim, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Alejandro Cohen, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Ken R. Duffy, Muriel Médard

TL;DR

This work tackles the dual challenge of security and reliability in IoT by repurposing AES padding bits as an intrinsic error-correcting resource. The authors integrate an ORBGRAND-based joint decoding and AES decryption at the receiver, leaving the transmitter architecture unchanged and achieving significant reliability gains. Key contributions include a hardware-oriented comparison showing low receiver power overhead (<15%), latency benefits, and substantial area and energy efficiency advantages over baseline encryption or separate encode/decode schemes. The findings demonstrate practical applicability for energy- and area-constrained IoT devices, with reduced retransmissions and improved BER/BLER in realistic channel conditions.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a significant advancement in digital technology, with its rapidly growing network of interconnected devices. This expansion, however, brings forth critical challenges in data security and reliability, especially under the threat of increasing cyber vulnerabilities. Addressing the security concerns, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is commonly employed for secure encryption in IoT systems. Our study explores an innovative use of AES, by repurposing AES padding bits for error correction and thus introducing a dual-functional method that seamlessly integrates error-correcting capabilities into the standard encryption process. The integration of the state-of-the-art Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoder (GRAND) in the receiver's architecture facilitates the joint decoding and decryption process. This strategic approach not only preserves the existing structure of the transmitter but also significantly enhances communication reliability in noisy environments, achieving a notable over 3 dB gain in Block Error Rate (BLER). Remarkably, this enhanced performance comes with a minimal power overhead at the receiver - less than 15% compared to the traditional decryption-only process, underscoring the efficiency of our hardware design for IoT applications. This paper discusses a comprehensive analysis of our approach, particularly in energy efficiency and system performance, presenting a novel and practical solution for reliable IoT communications.

Leveraging AES Padding: dBs for Nothing and FEC for Free in IoT Systems

TL;DR

This work tackles the dual challenge of security and reliability in IoT by repurposing AES padding bits as an intrinsic error-correcting resource. The authors integrate an ORBGRAND-based joint decoding and AES decryption at the receiver, leaving the transmitter architecture unchanged and achieving significant reliability gains. Key contributions include a hardware-oriented comparison showing low receiver power overhead (<15%), latency benefits, and substantial area and energy efficiency advantages over baseline encryption or separate encode/decode schemes. The findings demonstrate practical applicability for energy- and area-constrained IoT devices, with reduced retransmissions and improved BER/BLER in realistic channel conditions.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a significant advancement in digital technology, with its rapidly growing network of interconnected devices. This expansion, however, brings forth critical challenges in data security and reliability, especially under the threat of increasing cyber vulnerabilities. Addressing the security concerns, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is commonly employed for secure encryption in IoT systems. Our study explores an innovative use of AES, by repurposing AES padding bits for error correction and thus introducing a dual-functional method that seamlessly integrates error-correcting capabilities into the standard encryption process. The integration of the state-of-the-art Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoder (GRAND) in the receiver's architecture facilitates the joint decoding and decryption process. This strategic approach not only preserves the existing structure of the transmitter but also significantly enhances communication reliability in noisy environments, achieving a notable over 3 dB gain in Block Error Rate (BLER). Remarkably, this enhanced performance comes with a minimal power overhead at the receiver - less than 15% compared to the traditional decryption-only process, underscoring the efficiency of our hardware design for IoT applications. This paper discusses a comprehensive analysis of our approach, particularly in energy efficiency and system performance, presenting a novel and practical solution for reliable IoT communications.
Paper Structure (22 sections, 7 figures, 1 table, 1 algorithm)

This paper contains 22 sections, 7 figures, 1 table, 1 algorithm.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Works
  3. The Internet of Things
  4. Advanced Encryption Standard
  5. Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding
  6. Proposed System
  7. Transmitter
  8. Padding for encryption, no redundancy bits (Baseline)
  9. Padding for encryption, separate redundancy bits for error correction
  10. Padding for encryption, use the padding for error correction (Proposed)
  11. Receiver
  12. AES decryption without decoding (Baseline)
  13. Separate ORBGRAND decoding and AES decryption
  14. ORBGRAND + AES joint decoding and decryption (Proposed)
  15. Energy-Efficient Hardware Design
  16. ...and 7 more sections

Figures (7)

  • Figure 1: Transmitter: Encryption only. a. Baseline, b. Proposed
  • Figure 2: Transmitter: Separate encryption and encoding
  • Figure 3: Receiver: separate ORBGRAND decoding and AES decryption
  • Figure 4: Receiver: ORBGRAND + AES joint decoding and decryption
  • Figure 5: BER (left) and BLER (right) vs. $Eb/N_{0}$ for padding bits = 12-bit
  • ...and 2 more figures