Performance Analysis of Pairing-Based Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Constrained Devices

The paper deals with the implementation aspects of the bilinear pairing operation over an elliptic curve on constrained devices, such as smart cards, embedded devices, smart meters and similar devices. Although cryptographic constructions, such as group signatures, anonymous credentials or identity-based encryption schemes, often rely on the pairing operation, the implementation of such schemes into practical applications is not straightforward, in fact, it may become very difficult. In this paper, we show that the implementation is difficult not only due to the high computational complexity, but also due to the lack of cryptographic libraries and programming interfaces. In particular, we show how difficult it is to implement pairing-based schemes on constrained devices and show the performance of various libraries on different platforms. Furthermore, we show the performance estimates of fundamental cryptographic constructions, the group signatures. The purpose of this paper is to reduce the gap between the cryptographic designers and developers and give performance results that can be used for the estimation of the implementability and performance of novel, upcoming schemes.