A novel approach to symmetric cryptographic secured communication links for real-time teleoperation and telemetry

Communication links both wired and wireless can facilitate teleoperation and telemetry; however, contemporary security paradigms are not best suited for wired or wireless real-time teleoperation and telemetry as the strength of the security services provided increases the processing latency and energy consumption of utilised cryptographic platforms, resulting in a detrimental impact on real-time operational performance of teleoperation and telemetry. The aim of this research is to derive a novel approach to symmetric cryptographic secured communication links that will have a reduced impact on the operational performance of the application utilising the communication link. The contributions of this research is the cryptographic synergy philosophy. The cryptographic synergy philosophy is presented in two sections; the intrinsic paradigm and the extrinsic paradigm. The intrinsic paradigm prioritises the internal security service with the reduction in the time to compute the process. The extrinsic paradigm prioritises the global security service to maintain the ephemerial privacy of the shared secret used for secure communication links. The composite concept and speed-centric method derived from the intrinsic paradigm results in the design and implementation of new block cipher structures, designated the Permutation Substitution Network (PSN) and the Permutation Substitution Permutation Network (PSPN). Applying the PSN and PSPN structures enables the derivation of the Big Cat family of block ciphers which is a new design approach for lightweight block ciphers that focuses on speed of operation and sufficient cryptographic security for the specified time constraint; an instance of the approach is the presented Lightweight Encryption Operation Permutation Addition Rotation and Diffusion (LEOPARD) block cipher. The LEOPARD block cipher has a five per cent reduction per block call in its processing latency when compared to the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) standardised AES-128 block cipher. The interdependency concept and privacy-based methods derived from the extrinsic paradigm are utilised with the derivation of the expert decision making system that resulted in the design and implementation of the Privacy Cryptographic Unit (PCU). The PCU contains an autonomous security expert logic rule set that controls the number of cryptographic key regeneration performed over the mission duration. The outcome of this research is useful to practitioners involved with real-time teleoperation and telemetry, because the contributions presented achieved a reduction in detrimental operational performance on teleoperation and telemetry applications with the LEOPARD block cipher; whilst the PCU achieves autonomous enhancement of the privacy associated with cryptographic secured communication links for teleoperation and telemetry applications.