@TechReport{WM-CS-2006-7,
	author = {Haodong Wang and Qun Li},
	title = {{Efficient Implementation of Public Key Cryptosystems on MICAz and TelosB Motes}},
	institution = {College of William and Mary, Computer Science},
	address = {Williamsburg, VA},
	number = {WM-CS-2006-7},
	year = {2005},
	month = {October},
	URL = {}
	}

Abstract 

Even though symmetric-key scheme, which has been investigated extensively for sensor networks,
can fulfill many security requirements, public-key cryptography is more flexible and simple rendering
a clean interface for the security component. Against the popular belief that public key scheme is not
practical for sensor networks, this technical report describes the RSA and ECC public-key cryptosystem
implementation in the real world sensor devices. We detail the implementation of 1024-bit RSA and 160-
bit ECC cryptosystems onMICAz sensor motes, the latest product of Crossbow in theMICA family. We
evaluate the performance of our implementation by running the public key and the private key operations
in RSA cryptosystem, and signature generation and verification in ECC cryptosystem. We have achieved
the performance of 0.79s for RSA public key operation and 1.35s for ECC signature generation. For
comparison, we show our new ECC implementation on TelosB motes with a signature time 1.55s and a
verification time 2.25s. We also explain the reasons that TelosB mote can not performbetter thanMICAz
even though it is equipped with a 16-bit CPU. We believe that the experiment results are encouraging,
and RSA and ECC are getting closer to be practially implemented in the sensor motes in the real world.