Time-Complexity Characterization of NIST Lightweight Cryptography Finalists

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hasan, Najmul, BusiReddyGari, Prashanth
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Hasan, Najmul
BusiReddyGari, Prashanth
author_facet Hasan, Najmul
BusiReddyGari, Prashanth
contents Lightweight cryptography is becoming essential as emerging technologies in digital identity systems and Internet of Things verification continue to demand strong cryptographic assurance on devices with limited processing power, memory, and energy resources. As these technologies move into routine use, they demand cryptographic primitives that maintain strong security and deliver predictable performance through clear theoretical models of time complexity. Although NIST's lightweight cryptography project provides empirical evaluations of the ten finalist algorithms, a unified theoretical understanding of their time-complexity behavior remains absent. This work introduces a symbolic model that decomposes each scheme into initialization, data-processing, and finalization phases, enabling formal time-complexity derivation for all ten finalists. The results clarify how design parameters shape computational scaling on constrained mobile and embedded environments. The framework provides a foundation needed to distinguish algorithmic efficiency and guides the choice of primitives capable of supporting security systems in constrained environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_05641
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Time-Complexity Characterization of NIST Lightweight Cryptography Finalists
Hasan, Najmul
BusiReddyGari, Prashanth
Cryptography and Security
Lightweight cryptography is becoming essential as emerging technologies in digital identity systems and Internet of Things verification continue to demand strong cryptographic assurance on devices with limited processing power, memory, and energy resources. As these technologies move into routine use, they demand cryptographic primitives that maintain strong security and deliver predictable performance through clear theoretical models of time complexity. Although NIST's lightweight cryptography project provides empirical evaluations of the ten finalist algorithms, a unified theoretical understanding of their time-complexity behavior remains absent. This work introduces a symbolic model that decomposes each scheme into initialization, data-processing, and finalization phases, enabling formal time-complexity derivation for all ten finalists. The results clarify how design parameters shape computational scaling on constrained mobile and embedded environments. The framework provides a foundation needed to distinguish algorithmic efficiency and guides the choice of primitives capable of supporting security systems in constrained environments.
title Time-Complexity Characterization of NIST Lightweight Cryptography Finalists
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05641