Analysis of Post-Quantum Cryptography in User Equipment in 5G and Beyond

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the practical performance of post-quantum cryptography algorithms in 5G user equipment, highlighting their efficiency and overheads in realistic network conditions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed implementation and performance analysis of NIST-selected PQC algorithms in 5G user equipment using a full emulation stack.

Findings

ML-KEM with ML-DSA offers optimal latency performance.

HQC and SPHINCS+ incur higher overheads, unsuitable for time-sensitive applications.

Performance varies significantly with cryptographic configurations and network conditions.

Abstract

The advent of quantum computing threatens the security of classical public-key cryptographic systems, prompting the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). While PQC has been analyzed in theory, its performance in practical wireless communication environments remains underexplored. This paper presents a detailed implementation and performance evaluation of NIST-selected PQC algorithms in user equipment (UE) to UE communications over 5G networks. Using a full 5G emulation stack (Open5GS and UERANSIM) and PQC-enabled TLS 1.3 via BoringSSL and liboqs, we examine key encapsulation mechanisms and digital signature schemes across realistic network conditions. We evaluate performance based on handshake latency, CPU and memory usage, bandwidth, and retransmission rates, under varying cryptographic configurations and client loads. Our findings show that ML-KEM with ML-DSA offers the best efficiency for latency-sensitive applications, while SPHINCS+ and HQC combinations incur higher computational and transmission overheads, making them unsuitable for security-critical but time-sensitive 5G scenarios.