Secure authentication with energy-harvesting: A multi-dimensional balancing act

To validate our analysis, we created a hardware prototype including a solar-based energy harvester, an MSP-430 micro-controller and a 2.4 GHz radio link. We have accurately measured the energy consumption of the different components for different authentication algorithms, and at different levels of optimization. Our results show a trade-off over many orders of magnitude in energy and performance. However, the optimization knobs are distributed over every abstraction level. Our contribution therefore provides a comprehensive view at the overall energy optimization problem.