The increased use of low resource devices that are dependent on robust security solutions demands new cryptographic methods to optimize resource usage to allow devices to increase the workload. Recent years have introduced a lot of new ciphers that categorize as lightweight ciphers which have its intended use in such devices. This report aims to determine the performance and energy consumption, according to the NIST recommended evaluation parameters.

The report uses FELICS as a framework for determining the performance and energy consumption of 7 ciphers, which have similar characteristics to each other against AES. These experiments run on a simulated ATMega 128 AVR microcontroller in different scenarios that extrapolate quantifiable metrics from each cipher and then analyzed and compared to then present the viability to the reader. The results showed that lightweight ciphers are a better alternative in most cases, but this is accurate to only a few. The seven ciphers, AES, LEA, LED, PRESENT, HIGHT, PRINCE, SPARX show only LEA, SPARX, and HIGHT in most cases outperforming AES while other implementations would in some cases perform worse or marginally better than AES.