# AES and SNOW 3G are Feasible Choices for a 5G Phone from Energy Perspective

## TL;DR

This paper evaluates the energy efficiency of AES and SNOW 3G encryption algorithms in 5G mobile phones, concluding they are feasible choices that won't significantly affect battery life.

## Contribution

It provides detailed power consumption analysis of AES, SNOW 3G, and LTE protocol stack implementations on modern hardware platforms.

## Key findings

- AES and SNOW 3G have low power consumption.
- Encryption does not significantly impact 5G phone battery life.
- Current hardware supports efficient encryption for 5G.

## Abstract

The aspirations for a 5th generation (5G) mobile network are high. It has a vision of unprecedented data-rate and extremely pervasive connectivity. To cater such aspirations in a mobile phone, many existing efficiency aspects of a mobile phone need to be reviewed. We look into the matter of required energy to encrypt and decrypt the huge amount of traffic that will leave from and enter into a 5G enabled mobile phone. In this paper, we present an account of the power consumption details of the efficient hardware implementations of AES and SNOW 3G. We also present an account of the power consumption details of LTE protocol stack on some cutting edge hardware platforms. Based on the aforementioned two accounts, we argue that the energy requirement for the current encryption systems AES and SNOW 3G will not impact the battery-life of a 5G enabled mobile phone by any significant proportion.