Analysis of the power consumption of secure communication in wireless networks

With the growth of the Internet, communication and network security have been the focus of much attention. In addition, deployment of resource intensive security protocols in battery-powered mobile devices has raised power consumption to a significant design basis of network design. In this paper, we propose a power-efficient secure communication restart mechanism for a wireless network and analyze the power consumed while restarting a secure communication. An experimental test bed was developed to inspect the proposed mechanism and to evaluate it in terms of power consumption relative to that of conventional secure communication restart mechanisms. Using our enhanced mechanism, we were able to reduce the power consumed during a secure communication restart by up to 60% compared with conventional restart mechanisms.