CAKE : Energy-aware crypto-agile key management for energy-harvesting IoT with runtime switching between ASCON-128 and ML-KEM
*Amit RaikarCorresponding authoramitanilraikar@gmail.comDepartment of Electronics and Communication EngineeringVidyavardhaka College of EngineeringMysuru, Karnataka, 570017, IndiaView full profile → , Amruta Vijay Suranaamruta.surana@gmail.comDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringYashoda Mahadeo Kakade College of EngineeringTalegaon Dabhade, Pune, Maharashtra, 410507, IndiaView full profile → , P. V. Bhaskar Reddybhaskarreddy.pv@reva.edu.inDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringREVA UniversityBengaluru, Karnataka, 560064, IndiaView full profile → , N. Gireeshnaminenigireesh@gmail.comDepartment of Electronics and Communication EngineeringMohan Babu UniversityTirupati, Andhra Pradesh, 517102, IndiaView full profile → , D. K. Nayananayanadk08@gmail.comSchool of Electronics and Communication EngineeringREVA UniversityBangalore, Karnataka, 560064, IndiaView full profile → , U. Pavan Kumardrpavankumaru@gmail.comDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering (Data Science)School of EngineeringDayananda Sagar UniversityBengaluru, Karnataka, 562112, IndiaView full profile →
* Corresponding author · click or hover a name for details
- Received:
- 01 Mar 2026
- Published Online:
- 31 Aug 2026
- Article type:
- Research Article
- Language:
- EN
- Article no.:
- JIOS-2362
- Pages:
- 3115–3125
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to operate in environments where the available power is dynamic and uncertain. This leads to a stark security vs. energy consumption trade-off in post-quantum cryptography. While modern post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) primitives like ML-KEM (Kyber-512) provide strong quantum-secure security, they are computationally expensive and require large amounts of energy. In this paper, an energy-aware key management protocol Crypto-Agile Key Exchange, CAKE is proposed. CAKE is evaluated using a simulation framework targeted to a Cortex-M4 based IoT node that operates under realistics solar energy harvesting settings. Our results demonstrate that proposed protocol achieves zero session drops at the node for up to 10,000 state transitions and it achieves a reduction of 47.3% in number of Kyber KEM operations in indoor settings, while it achieves an average transition time of 14.7 ms. Under constrained conditions, the proposed protocol is proven to be IND-CCA2 secure in the high-energy state, and 128-bit classical security is preserved in the low-energy state.
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References
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