Abstract The increasing advancement of quantum computing threatens the security foundations of classical public-key cryptosystems, particularly RSA and ECC, which remain widely deployed across IoT infrastructures. However, existing post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) schemes are computationally intensive and often unsuitable for resource-constrained IoT devices where memory, CPU cycles, and battery capacity are severely limited. This work proposes EAL-PQCF, an Energy-Efficient Adaptive Lightweight Post-Quantum Cryptographic Framework explicitly designed for constrained IoT environments. The framework introduces a three-mode adaptive PQC strategy consisting of Eco-Secure, Standard-Secure, and Quantum-Threat modes, each selected dynamically based on device battery level, CPU load, and message sensitivity. A Python-based virtual testbed incorporating a simulated IoT device model, lattice-based PQC primitives, an energy estimation module, and an adaptive decision engine is developed for performance evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that EAL-PQCF achieves 18–36% energy savings, 14–29% reduction in CPU cycles, and significantly improved battery longevity compared to baseline PQC methods. The proposed solution bridges the gap between high-security quantum-resistant cryptography and the practical constraints of IoT devices, offering a scalable pathway for secure next-generation IoT deployments.
Abstract The increasing advancement of quantum computing threatens the security foundations of classical public-key cryptosystems, particularly RSA and ECC, which remain widely deployed across IoT infrastructures. However, existing post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) schemes are computationally intensive and often unsuitable for resource-constrained IoT devices where memory, CPU cycles, and battery capacity are severely limited. This work proposes EAL-PQCF, an Energy-Efficient Adaptive Lightweight Post-Quantum Cryptographic Framework explicitly designed for constrained IoT environments. The framework introduces a three-mode adaptive PQC strategy consisting of Eco-Secure, Standard-Secure, and Quantum-Threat modes, each selected dynamically based on device battery level, CPU load, and message sensitivity. A Python-based virtual testbed incorporating a simulated IoT device model, lattice-based PQC primitives, an energy estimation module, and an adaptive decision engine is developed for performance evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that EAL-PQCF achieves 18–36% energy savings, 14–29% reduction in CPU cycles, and significantly improved battery longevity compared to baseline PQC methods. The proposed solution bridges the gap between high-security quantum-resistant cryptography and the practical constraints of IoT devices, offering a scalable pathway for secure next-generation IoT deployments.
The emergence of quantum computing threatens classical cryptographic systems, including RSA and ECC, potentially compromising the security of pervasive Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Resourceconstrained IoT devices—such as sensors, embedded controllers, and microcontrollers—face significant challenges in adopting post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) protocols due to computational, memory, and energy limitations. This paper proposes AQ-PQC, an adaptive lightweight hybrid key exchange protocol combining Kyber lattice-based KEM and lightweight elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), specifically designed for constrained devices. AQ-PQC introduces a dynamic parameter tuning algorithm that adjusts key sizes, handshake rounds, and compression ratios based on real-time device state and network conditions. Formal security analysis under the IND-CCA model demonstrates quantum-resistance and forward secrecy. Extensive hardware implementation on Raspberry Pi 4 and ESP32 devices reveals a significant reduction in handshake latency, energy consumption, and memory footprint compared to conventional PQC protocols. The proposed framework provides a practical, reproducible, and secure methodology for post-quantum IoT communications, supporting heterogeneous and resource-limited networks.
Post-quantum secure communication solutions are needed in engineering areas with distributed, resource-constrained infrastructures, such as Internet of Things (IoT) networks, due to the rapid expansion of quantum computing. The practical deployment of quantum-resistant cryptographic techniques is limited by computing cost, energy inefficiency, and implementation-level side-channel vulnerabilities. Lattice-based and hash-based post-quantum cryptography systems exhibit significant execution latency, large memory footprints, and poor adaptability to diverse device settings. Lack of system-level optimization and adaptive cryptographic selection limits their use in real-time engineering systems, where energy-performance trade-offs and secure execution are crucial. This study offers an adaptive, energy-aware Hybrid Quantum-Resistant Security Framework (HQR-SF) that combines lattice-based key encapsulation with hash-based digital signature techniques to overcome these issues. The HQR-SF’s context-driven cryptographic selection engine configures security primitives depending on anticipated threat level, computing capability, and data sensitivity. A constant-time vectorized polynomial transformation module accelerates modular arithmetic while reducing timing and power-based side-channel leakage. In the case of limited engineering systems, the framework offers a secure end-to-end communication path, complete with hybrid key exchange, authentication and data integrity protection enforcement. The proposed HQR-SF is evaluated within a testbed, which is developed through a simulation, to represent operational constraints of IoT, such as processor capacity and energy limitations. Experimental results reveal that, with a security score of 98.6%, HQR-SF reduces latency, memory consumption, computational cost, communication overhead and energy consumption by 35.93%, 25.64%, 34.55%, 17.65% and 20.10% respectively compared to the baseline approach. The framework is also easily extensible to address a variety of device types and is appropriate for use in future secure engineering infrastructures with scale.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a critical threat to classical cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, particularly in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, where secure communication is essential but often constrained by limited computational resources. This paper investigates the feasibility of deploying post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms on resource-constrained devices. In particular, we implement three PQC algorithms -- BIKE, CRYSTALS-Kyber, and HQC -- on a lightweight IoT platform built with Raspberry Pi devices. Leveraging the Open Quantum Safe (\texttt{liboqs}) library in conjunction with \texttt{mbedTLS}, we develop quantum-secure key exchange protocols, and evaluate their performance in terms of computational overhead, memory usage, and energy consumption for quantum secure communication. Experimental results demonstrate that the integration of PQC algorithms on constrained hardware is practical, reinforcing the urgent need for quantum-resilient cryptographic frameworks in next-generation IoT devices. The implementation of this paper is available at https://iqsec-lab.github.io/PQC-IoT/.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the looming risk of quantum computing necessitate a transition from traditional to quantum-resistant cryptographic standards. In this research article, we propose a novel hybrid crypto framework featuring an Adaptive Security Controller (ASC) that dynamically integrates a lightweight symmetric cipher, ChaCha20, with Kyber512 and a post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) scheme Dilithium to secure resource-constrained IoT environments. Unlike existing models that depend either on PQC or lightweight methods, our proposed framework dynamically switches encryption modes based on device constraints, energy availability, and trust levels—delivering a balance among strong security and manageable computational costs. To evaluate our framework, we performed multiple simulations with the Contiki-NG/COOJA platform over several IoT setups. Experimental results show that the proposed approach increase encryption speed by 37% as compared to existing RSA-based methods while keeping energy consumption within 12% of ChaCha20 configurations. In addition, the memory footprint remains under 25 KB RAM and 50 KB ROM, assure compatibility with microcontroller-class devices. By integrating quantum-resistant cryptography with lightweight performance enhancements and policy-based adaptability, our proposed framework guarantee better confidentiality, authenticity, and forward secrecy for next-generation IoT networks.
The explosion of constrained IoT devices with limited resources has increased the necessity of having efficient security measures to counter both the classical and new quantum threat. In this paper, we introduce Q-IoTGuard, a simple quantum cryptography platform that can be used in heterogeneous IoT networks. The model combines entanglement-assisted quantum key distribution (QKD) with lattice-based post-quantum encryption (PQC) in order to guarantee secure communication with a minimum of computational and energy overhead. The methodology commences with data preprocessing, in which the traffic of IoT and characteristics of the devices are organized, standardized and filtered in order to support the efficient cryptographic operations. Raw data is first fed into quantum-assisted key generation with simplified BB84 protocols with error correction and privacy amplification. Lightweight PQC encrypts then message providing resistance against quantum-enabled attacks. The simulation outcomes show that Q-IoTGuard has a low-key generation time, low latency, low-energy consumption, and high quantum attack resistance among sensors, actuators, and gateway devices. The flow-based architecture, which incorporates preprocessing, key gen, and lightweight encryption would make the framework practical to be deployed on resource-constrained IoT devices. Q-IoTGuard is a new scalable and energy-efficient system of securing next-generation IoT networks that addresses the gap between theoretical quantum security and the practical implementation.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a critical threat to classical cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, particularly in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, where secure communication is essential but often constrained by limited computational resources. This paper investigates the feasibility of deploying post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms on resource-constrained devices. In particular, we implement three PQC algorithms - BIKE, CRYSTALS-Kyber, and HQC - on a lightweight IoT platform built with Raspberry Pi devices. Leveraging the Open Quantum Safe (liboqs) library in conjunction with mbedTLS, we develop quantumsecure key exchange protocols, and evaluate their performance in terms of computational overhead, memory usage, and energy consumption for quantum secure communication. Experimental results demonstrate that the integration of PQC algorithms on constrained hardware is practical, reinforcing the urgent need for quantum-resilient cryptographic frameworks in next-generation IoT devices. The implementation of this paper is available at https://iqsec-lab.github.io/PQC-IoT/.