Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) enable flexible, infrastructure-less communication for mission critical applications but they are vulnerable impersonation and routing attacks. Quantum computing threatens classical public-key primitives (RSA, ECC) used in MANET security, driving interest in post-quantum cryptography (PQC) for decentralized, resource limited settings. This survey reviews PQC techniques and its application to MANETs, focusing on signature, key exchange, and encryption primitives from lattice based, code base, hash base, and multivariate based families. Synthesizing findings from 40+ studies, we compare security, overheads, and feasibility for constrained nodes and dynamic topologies. Lattice based schemes (Kyber, Dilithium) offer the best balance of security and efficiency, though large keys and CPU costs hinder adoption. Lightweight primitives and hybrid models (PQC with symmetric cryptography) show promise. Key gaps include few lightweight implementations, limited routing level integration (e.g., OLSRv2), and scarce real world validation. Future work should optimize PQC for low power devices, embed it into MANET protocols, and test via simulation and hardware to enable practical, quantum resilient deployments.
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) enable flexible, infrastructure-less communication for mission critical applications but they are vulnerable impersonation and routing attacks. Quantum computing threatens classical public-key primitives (RSA, ECC) used in MANET security, driving interest in post-quantum cryptography (PQC) for decentralized, resource limited settings. This survey reviews PQC techniques and its application to MANETs, focusing on signature, key exchange, and encryption primitives from lattice based, code base, hash base, and multivariate based families. Synthesizing findings from 40+ studies, we compare security, overheads, and feasibility for constrained nodes and dynamic topologies. Lattice based schemes (Kyber, Dilithium) offer the best balance of security and efficiency, though large keys and CPU costs hinder adoption. Lightweight primitives and hybrid models (PQC with symmetric cryptography) show promise. Key gaps include few lightweight implementations, limited routing level integration (e.g., OLSRv2), and scarce real world validation. Future work should optimize PQC for low power devices, embed it into MANET protocols, and test via simulation and hardware to enable practical, quantum resilient deployments.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to conventional public-key cryptographic mechanisms deployed in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). Due to their decentralized architecture, dynamic topology, and resource-constrained nodes, MANETs require security solutions that are not only quantum-resistant but also computationally efficient. This paper presents a comparative evaluation of lattice-based and code-based post-quantum digital signature schemes for secure data transmission in MANET environments. The study focuses on analyzing key performance parameters including key generation time, signature and verification latency, end-to-end transmission delay, and overall security strength under varying mobility conditions. Simulation experiments are conducted using realistic mobility datasets and network models to assess the feasibility of deploying post-quantum signatures in dynamic MANET scenarios. The results demonstrate that while lattice-based schemes offer better computational efficiency, code-based schemes provide stronger security guarantees at the cost of increased communication overhead. This work highlights the critical trade-offs between security, performance, and scalability, and provides practical insights for designing lightweight post-quantum security frameworks for future mobile networks.
The advent of quantum computing poses significant challenges to traditional cryptographic systems, threatening the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of digital communications. This paper investigates the integration of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms into mobile communication systems to address these challenges. The study focuses on evaluating key PQC algorithms shortlisted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), including CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon and SPHINCS+, within the context of 5G and future mobile network architectures. The research encompasses the design and implementation of an experimental framework involving mobile devices, servers, and cloud-based infrastructure to simulate real-world communication scenarios. Performance metrics such as key generation time, signature generation, encryption and decryption speed, and resource consumption were analyzed across various devices to identify algorithms suitable for mobile environments. The findings reveal that lattice-based algorithms, such as Kyber and Dilithium, offer a promising balance between security and efficiency, making them ideal for resource-constrained devices. In contrast, hash-based algorithms like SPHINCS+ exhibit higher computational demands, limiting their practicality in certain applications. This work highlights the importance of algorithm selection and hardware optimization in ensuring secure and efficient communications in the quantum era. By integrating theoretical advancements in PQC with practical applications, this research lays the foundation for quantum-resistant security in mobile networks, ensuring secure and future-ready digital communications.
The advance of quantum computing poses significant risks to traditional cryptographic systems, including RSA and ECC, due to algorithms such as Shor's, prompting an urgent need for robust post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions. This paper presents a systematic review of PQC algorithms, encompassing lattice-based, code-based, multivariate polynomial, hash-based, and supersingular isogeny-based cryptography. By evaluating recent publications and NIST standardization efforts, we assess these approaches in terms of quantum resistance, computational efficiency, scalability, and implementation challenges. Lattice-based schemes, notably CRYSTALS-Kyber, excel in quantum-secure encryption and performance, whereas codebased systems like McEliece are hindered by large key sizes. Hash-based signatures, such as SPHINCS+, and isogeny-based protocols, including SIDH, provide promising alternatives but require further optimization to reduce computational overhead. Our analysis highlights the potential of hybrid PQC methods and lightweight hardware implementations for securing emerging domains like IoT, blockchain, and financial systems. The review serves as a foundational resource for researchers and practitioners, advocating the adoption of quantum-resistant cryptography to preserve data confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity in the quantum era.
The threats are existential to the traditional cryptosystems of public keys, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), due to the rapid progress in quantum computing. Such algorithms as the Shor and Grover algorithms prove that as soon as large scale quantum computers are achieved, these classical cryptographic protocols will not provide any privacy and integrity to online communication. This has created an emergency to find post-quantum cryptography (PQC), or quantum-safe cryptography, which will resist attacks by both classical and quantum attackers. The paper is a review of the latest research and development in post-quantum cryptographic algorithms and their implementation in current security systems. We organize quantum-safe methods into significant organizations such as lattice-based, hash-based, multivariate polynomial-based and code-based encrypted communications. Each type has been evaluated critically based on computational efficiency, key sizes, speed of encryption/decryption and security proofs. The survey also examines the current standardization activities happening in the world and especially the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) PQC competition, which lists candidate algorithms that have advanced to standard adoption. Besides this, the paper addresses hybrid cryptographic designs that use both classical and post-quantum bases in ensuring a seamless migration in the transition phase. Internet security protocols like TLS, VPNs and blockchain consensus as applications of PQC are examined in detail. Lastly, we pinpoint open research issues, which include creating lightweight PQC to support resource-constrained IoT devices, balancing performance and strong security assurances, and interoperability between the new PQC algorithms and existing infrastructures. Through detailed survey we inform the future of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers on the preparation of the post-quantum era of secure digital communications.
The potential of the swift development of quantum computing is an extreme danger to the traditional cryptographic programs, and they are the foundation of the modern communication infrastructure. RSA and ECC are classical public-key algorithms that can be successfully quantum-attacked, in particular, Shor's algorithm can easily factor large integers and calculate discrete logarithms (Bernstein et al., 2017). The Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has become the key to secure the next-generation communication networks against these threats, which relies on lattice problem-based algorithms, hash-based based algorithms, multivariate polynomials-based algorithms, and code-based cryptography. The paper examines the concepts, design, and implementation issues of PQC within current network infrastructure focusing on the secure transmission of data, authentication, and key management in the upcoming 5G and 6G networks. The approach will include the survey of existing algorithms of PQC, model the integration of protocol in the communication systems and test computational efficiency, security strength, and scalability. It has been found that PQC is suitable to protect network communications against quantum attackers, and achieves reasonable performance, though trade-offs can be seen in terms of computation overhead, key size, and latency. The research offers understanding to the researcher, network engineers and policy makers in order to adopt quantum resistant cryptography protocols to secure the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of information in the future communication networks.
With the rapid advancement regarding quantum computing, traditional cryptographic systems face an existential threat because of their reliance concerning mathematical challenges which may be addressed effectively solved using quantum algorithms like the one developed by Shor. This imminent risk has driven extensive research into quantum-resistant cryptography (PQC), that seeks to develop encryption methods resilient against attacks powered by quantum computing. This study offers a thorough literature survey on high-level security techniques in quantum security for PQC, analysing past and current research efforts in this domain. We first examine the vulnerabilities of classical cryptographic protocols, including public-key encryption methods such as RSA (developed by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman) and ECC (which uses elliptic curve mathematics), and traditional cryptographic hashing methods, against quantum adversaries. The study then explores the foundational approaches to quantum-secure cryptography, including lattice-based, hash-based, multivariate polynomial, code-based, and isogeny-based encryption methods that possess emerged as promising candidates for standardization. The survey highlights key challenges in the real-world application of PQC, including performance trade-offs, key size overhead, and deployment complexities. We conclude by identifying future research directions during the creation of scalable, efficient, and provably secure cryptographic methods designed to withstand quantum attacks techniques. As the shift toward the quantum-resilient era approaches, this survey aims to provide a clear and structured comprehension of the evolving the domain of quantum security for PQC.