Published Paper Details:

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in the deployment of numerous connected devices that continuously exchange data over communication networks. Many of these devices operate under resource constraints, making the selection of efficient encryption algorithms an important consideration for secure communication. This study presents a comparative performance analysis of five encryption algorithms, namely AES-128, PRESENT, Salsa20, ChaCha20, and SIMON, for software-based IoT communication. The algorithms are evaluated using a Python-based simulation environment with input data sizes ranging from 1 KB to 1 MB. Encryption and decryption execution times are measured and compared under the same experimental conditions. The reported results show that ChaCha20 provides the lowest execution time among the evaluated algorithms across the tested data sizes, followed by Salsa20. For 1 MB of data, ChaCha20 records encryption and decryption times of 271.1 ms and 269.4 ms, respectively, while Salsa20 records 293.6 ms and 291.5 ms. AES-128 provides an established standardized reference, whereas PRESENT and SIMON show higher execution times in the evaluated software environment. The results indicate that ChaCha20 offers a favorable performance profile for IoT applications where reduced computational delay is important. However, the study is limited to software-based simulation and does not directly measure hardware-level energy consumption. The findings therefore provide a comparative performance perspective rather than a universal recommendation for all IoT platforms.