The energy impact of security mechanisms in modern mobile devices

The massive uptake of mobile devices is raising concerns about their security. Yet there may be a difficult trade-off to be made between security and power consumption. Luca Caviglione of the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation, National Research Council of Italy and Alessio Merlo, University of Genoa and eCampus University, undertook a power consumption analysis of some security-related aspects deployed within a sample Android mobile phone and examined whether security does have an energy cost associated with it. The availability of powerful and cost-effective wireless interfaces makes the modern Internet accessible according to the ‘anywhere, anytime’ paradigm. In addition, the explosion of Web 2.0 applications enables people to interact with an increased degree of social connectivity. And, in a simple and cost-effective manner, modern end-user devices allow people to produce and share contents, interact with the surrounding environment – for example, via Global Positioning System (GPS) or Near Field Communication (NFC) mechanisms – and enjoy multimedia material such as music and video. To be effective, such a rich set of features must be supported by an adequate supply of on-board power, which is mostly provided via batteries. Even though battery technology and silicon efficiency have made important advances in the past few years, excessive power drain still remains the major weakness when designing and using mobile appliances. Luca Caviglione of the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation, National Research Council of Italy and Alessio Merlo, University of Genoa and eCampus University, undertook a power consumption analysis of some security-related aspects deployed within a sample Android mobile phone and examined whether security does have an energy cost associated with it.