research project on Lightweight Authentication Protocols for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices

Objective 1 is to conduct a systematic literature review of lightweight IoT
authentication protocols published in the last years (2015-2026) and create a
comparison matrix that includes at least 45 primary studies and a documented
statement of the evaluation gap.
• Objective 2: Design LAP-Ascon, a three-message mutual authentication and key
establishment protocol which is based on 100% on Ascon-AEAD128 and
Ascon-Hash256, and a fully-specified message format, state model and threat model.
• Objective 3: Design security has been verified with the help of two independent
automated tools (ProVerif and Scyther) and design has been modified until it is verified
by both the tools.
• Objective 4: Deploy the protocol on an ESP32 and an ARM Cortex-M4
development board (as well as in the gateway) and publish the code and build
instructions as an open-source repository.
•Objective 5: Design and implement a benchmarking harness that can be reproduced
and benchmark LAP-Ascon and three baseline protocols on the same hardware
reporting execution time, RAM, flash, bytes on the wire, and energy per authentication
with confidence intervals.