Privacy-Preserving Edge Computing from Pairing-Based Inner Product Functional Encryption

Abstract: Pairing-based inner product functional encryption provides an efficient theoretical construction for privacy-preserving edge computing secured by widely deployed elliptic curve cryptography. In this work, an efficient software implementation framework for pairing-based function-hiding inner product encryption (FHIPE) is presented using the recently proposed and widely adopted BLS12-381 pairing-friendly elliptic curve. Algorithmic optimizations provide $\approx 2.6 \times$ and $\approx 3.4 \times$ speedup in FHIPE encryption and decryption respectively, and extensive performance analysis is presented using a Raspberry Pi 4B edge device. The proposed optimizations enable this implementation framework to achieve performance and ciphertext size comparable to previous work despite being implemented on an edge device with a slower processor and supporting a curve at much higher security level with a larger prime field. Practical privacy-preserving edge computing applications such as encrypted biomedical sensor data classification and secure wireless fingerprint-based indoor localization are also demonstrated using the proposed implementation framework.