Pairing for Greenhorn: Survey and Future Perspective

TL;DR

This paper provides an accessible overview of elliptic curve pairings, compares different types for cryptographic use, and discusses their efficiency and extensions to multilinear pairings for lightweight device applications.

Contribution

It offers a simplified explanation of pairings, evaluates their efficiency for lightweight cryptography, and explores extensions to multilinear pairings with feasibility analysis.

Findings

Identifies suitable pairings for lightweight cryptographic protocols.

Analyzes bandwidth and computational efficiency of various pairings.

Discusses potential and challenges of multilinear pairings.

Abstract

Pairing is the most powerful tool in cryptography that maps two points on the elliptic curve to the group over the finite field. Mostly cryptographers consider pairing as a black box and use it for implementing pairing-based cryptographic protocols. This paper aims to give the overview of pairing as simple as possible for greenhorn and those who are working and wish to work in the pairing. The paper gives the concrete background of pairing and recommends an appropriate pairing among different choices for constructing pairing-based cryptographic protocols. We also analyze the bandwidth and computational efficiency of pairing and submitting those pairing suitable for implementing a cryptographic protocol for lightweight devices. Additionally, we discuss the extension of bilinear pairing to tri-linear and multilinear pairing and discuss a few assumptions to check their feasibility to implement multilinear pairing.