Introducing AES and ECDSA to BLE Communication for Enhanced Security

ŞEKER Ö., Çabuk U. C., DALKILIÇ G.

IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1109/lwc.2025.3643497
  • Dergi Adı: IEEE Wireless Communications Letters
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Compendex, INSPEC
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: AES, BLE, Cybersecurity, ECDSA, ESP32, IoT
  • Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has recently seen widespread adoption among Internet of Things (IoT) applications, sensor networks, personal area networks, and automation systems, thanks to its “lightweight" nature and low energy consumption. However, it lacks the most advanced security measures, which raises security concerns for use in critical scenarios. This work aims to integrate higher security standards into the BLE protocol, namely by ensuring confidentiality via Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and by enabling integrity and non-repudiation through the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). The proposed framework was validated and tested over a testbed containing ESP32s with a BLE module, a camera, and an LCD screen. While the communication and computation overhead increases due to cryptographic redundancies, optimization methods were offered to minimize the impact. Hence, the desired security levels in confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation were successfully achieved within an acceptable performance margin for most IoT setups, making BLE more useful in critical scenarios.