Nowadays, the increased use of battery-powered mobile appliances and the urge to access time-sensitive data anytime anywhere has fuelled a high demand for wireless networks. However, wireless networks are susceptible to intrusion and security problems. There is an inherent need to secure the wireless data communication to ensure the confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and non repudiation of the data being exchanged. On the other hand, the computation and the resultant energy consumption to achieve sufficient security can be high. Encryption algorithms are generally computationally intensive, and consume a significant amount of computing resources (such as CPU time, memory, and battery power). Considering the limited resources on wireless devices, it is crucial that security protocols be implemented efficiently. This manuscript focuses on how energy consumption is impacted by the use of unoptimised AES-CCMP algorithms and proposes an optimized AES CCMP algorithm using 2-way interleaving that does not compromise the security of wireless communication sessions. There is also analysis of the performance of AES (a.k.a. Rijndael) in its AES-CCMP implementation. The 2-way interleaving technique is an optimization of the CBC-MAC that is investigated using two performance metrics (namely encryption time and throughput).

18 pages, University of Mauritius Research Journal - Volume 15 - 2009