Efficient lightweight chaotic secure communication system for WSNs and IoT

Interconnected embedded devices are the key building block for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Many real-life WSNs and IoT applications require cryptographic security mechanisms to ensure data confidentiality during transmission. This paper presents the design of an efficient chaos-based secure communication system and its optimized implementation on an 8-bit microcontroller. The proposed cryptosystem performs one confusion-diffusion round at the byte level by combining the centrifuge operation and the XOR operator. Confusion and diffusion layers are endowed with chaotic sequences from two discrete one-dimensional logistic maps. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed cryptosystem are validated at both statistical and implementation levels.