Time-Complexity Characterization of NIST Lightweight Cryptography Finalists

TL;DR

This paper develops a symbolic model to formally analyze and compare the time complexity of NIST's lightweight cryptography finalists, aiding in selecting efficient algorithms for resource-constrained devices.

Contribution

It introduces a unified theoretical framework for deriving time complexity of all ten NIST finalist algorithms, enhancing understanding of their efficiency in constrained environments.

Findings

Clarifies how design parameters affect computational scaling.

Provides a formal method for time-complexity derivation.

Guides selection of efficient cryptographic primitives.

Abstract

Lightweight cryptography is becoming essential as emerging technologies in digital identity systems and Internet of Things verification continue to demand strong cryptographic assurance on devices with limited processing power, memory, and energy resources. As these technologies move into routine use, they demand cryptographic primitives that maintain strong security and deliver predictable performance through clear theoretical models of time complexity. Although NIST's lightweight cryptography project provides empirical evaluations of the ten finalist algorithms, a unified theoretical understanding of their time-complexity behavior remains absent. This work introduces a symbolic model that decomposes each scheme into initialization, data-processing, and finalization phases, enabling formal time-complexity derivation for all ten finalists. The results clarify how design parameters shape computational scaling on constrained mobile and embedded environments. The framework provides a foundation needed to distinguish algorithmic efficiency and guides the choice of primitives capable of supporting security systems in constrained environments.