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Energy Consumption for Securing Lightweight IoT Protocols

Nikbakht Bideh, Pegah LU orcid ; Sönnerup, Jonathan LU and Hell, Martin LU (2020)
Abstract
In this paper we address the energy consumption of the Constraint Application Protocol (CoAP) and the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol and compare their overhead. We also pay attention to the use case of security in IoT and analyze the energy consumption when using TLS/DTLS for the two protocols. In our experiments we use ESP32 with libcoap, MQTT, and mbed TLS libraries and conduct real-world measurements using Otii, a high precision voltage and current measurement tool. While the particular numbers are implementation and hardware dependent, we can still make interesting observations.
For data transfer, we find that aggregating data to larger packets can significantly reduce the energy consumption. We also find that... (More)
In this paper we address the energy consumption of the Constraint Application Protocol (CoAP) and the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol and compare their overhead. We also pay attention to the use case of security in IoT and analyze the energy consumption when using TLS/DTLS for the two protocols. In our experiments we use ESP32 with libcoap, MQTT, and mbed TLS libraries and conduct real-world measurements using Otii, a high precision voltage and current measurement tool. While the particular numbers are implementation and hardware dependent, we can still make interesting observations.
For data transfer, we find that aggregating data to larger packets can significantly reduce the energy consumption. We also find that AES-CCM8 seems slightly more efficient than other modes of operation. In comparison, the DTLS handshake for setting up the secure connection is very expensive, and also very dependent on security level and algorithm choices.
For firmware updates, AES-CCM8 is again slightly better than the alternatives, but the differences between CoAP and MQTT are much more significant, favoring MQTT due to the use of the retransmission support in TCP. This is also evident in lossy networks, where MQTT saves up to 91% energy compared to CoAP at 20% loss rate. Finally, we find that energy consumption in CoAP can to some extent be reduced in lossy networks by modifying the retransmission timeout. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
CoAP, MQTT, Energy Consumption, Security Overhead, IoT
host publication
The 10th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT 2020)
article number
16
pages
8 pages
publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
external identifiers
  • scopus:85117542569
ISBN
978-1-4503-8758-3
DOI
10.1145/3410992.3411008
project
Säkra mjukvaruuppdateringar för den smarta staden
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
7fc36cb5-adc5-4e12-bdd3-d2f0ac3a14f7
date added to LUP
2020-09-17 11:32:53
date last changed
2022-01-13 11:35:27
@inproceedings{7fc36cb5-adc5-4e12-bdd3-d2f0ac3a14f7,
  abstract     = {{In this paper we address the energy consumption of the Constraint Application Protocol (CoAP) and the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol and compare their overhead. We also pay attention to the use case of security in IoT and analyze the energy consumption when using TLS/DTLS for the two protocols. In our experiments we use ESP32 with libcoap, MQTT, and mbed TLS libraries and conduct real-world measurements using Otii, a high precision voltage and current measurement tool. While the particular numbers are implementation and hardware dependent, we can still make interesting observations. <br/>For data transfer, we find that aggregating data to larger packets can significantly reduce the energy consumption. We also find that AES-CCM8 seems slightly more efficient than other modes of operation. In comparison, the DTLS handshake for setting up the secure connection is very expensive, and also very dependent on security level and algorithm choices.<br/>For firmware updates, AES-CCM8 is again slightly better than the alternatives, but the differences between CoAP and MQTT are much more significant, favoring MQTT due to the use of the retransmission support in TCP. This is also evident in lossy networks, where MQTT saves up to 91% energy compared to CoAP at 20% loss rate. Finally, we find that energy consumption in CoAP can to some extent be reduced in lossy networks by modifying the retransmission timeout.}},
  author       = {{Nikbakht Bideh, Pegah and Sönnerup, Jonathan and Hell, Martin}},
  booktitle    = {{The 10th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT 2020)}},
  isbn         = {{978-1-4503-8758-3}},
  keywords     = {{CoAP; MQTT; Energy Consumption; Security Overhead; IoT}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
  title        = {{Energy Consumption for Securing Lightweight IoT Protocols}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3410992.3411008}},
  doi          = {{10.1145/3410992.3411008}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}