The Feasibility of the CRYSTALS-Kyber Scheme for Smart Metering Systems

This paper investigates the feasibility of a quantum-secure Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) in hardware constrained Smart Meter (SM) equipment. In this sense, the Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices (CRYSTALS)-Kyber scheme, the new standard for post-quantum Public-Key Encryption (PKE) systems chosen by the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization process, is scrutinized and implemented in a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. Experimental results show that the proposed hardware/software co-design implementation of the CRYSTALS-Kyber scheme in an SoC FPGA device reduces its execution time by around 70% compared to its software implementation. Moreover, the hardware resource analysis shows that the proposed hardware/software co-design implementation of the CRYSTALS-Kyber scheme in an SoC device is feasible for SM equipment.