A Lightweight Enhanced Montgomery Elliptic Curve Cryptography Scheme for Secure Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

M. Nanak Zakaria; Muladi; Hakkun Elmunsyah

doi:10.48084/etasr.17754

Authors

M. Nanak Zakaria Electrical Engineering Department, Politeknik Negeri Malang, Indonesia | Electrical and Informatics Engineering Study Program, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia
Muladi Electrical and Informatics Engineering Study Program, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2904-5398
Hakkun Elmunsyah Electrical and Informatics Engineering Study Program, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia

Volume: 16 | Issue: 3 | Pages: 35608-35619 | June 2026 | https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.17754

Received: 25 January 2026 | Revised: 14 March 2026, 20 March 2026, and 6 April 2026 | Accepted: 10 April 2026 | Online: 6 June 2026

Corresponding author: Muladi

Abstract

This paper presents an Enhanced Montgomery Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) scheme suitable for secure communication in resource‑constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). While Montgomery‑based ECC is attractive for fast scalar multiplication, practical deployments on sensor nodes still suffer from significant encryption and decryption latency, non‑negligible energy consumption, and limited CPU and memory capability. To address these issues, the proposed design revisits the scalar multiplication ladder and unifies the differential addition formulas to reduce redundant field operations, while preserving the original security level. The scheme's performance was compared with those of the classical Weierstrass‑based ECC and the standard Montgomery implementation. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme shows a significant performance improvement in terms of execution time, energy consumption, and CPU encryption time, without increasing ciphertext size or memory requirements, while maintaining the level of cryptographic security and randomness. These findings indicate that the proposed scheme offers a practical public‑key solution for long‑lived, battery‑powered WSNs.

Keywords:

elliptic curve cryptography, Montgomery, CPU usage

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