Hybrid Encryption Technique for Low-Latency Multi-Hop Communications.

With the recent widespread use of 5G networks, real-time ultra-high-definition multimedia applications, video conferencing, and telecommuting have become possible. As a result, ultra-low-latency communication has become essential for ensuring human safety. In addition, as attacks on communication data gradually increase with the development of networks, packet encryption is applied to most services to protect data. However, in a multi-hop encrypted communication environment, it is challenging to achieve the low latency required for communication due to the significant overhead of encryption and decryption during information processing at the intermediate node. Conventional routing path optimization and caching techniques have evolved to reduce latency. However, the improvement in latency is significantly diminished in multi-hop encryption communication. Therefore, research is needed on low-latency and high-reliability encryption communication methods in a multi-hop communication environment. To this end, this paper proposes a hybrid encryption technique. The proposed technique improves latency while maintaining memory usage at a similar level in a multi-hop encrypted communication environment. Simulation results show that the proposed technique could reduce latency by an average of 10% compared to single-encrypted communication.