摘要：Asthe popularityof wireless networksincreases,sodoes theneed to protect them. Encryptionalgorithmsplay amain role in information security systems. On the other side, those algorithmsconsume a significant amount of computingresources such as CPUtime, memory, and batterypower.Thispaperillustrates the keyconcepts of security, wirelessnetworks, and security over wireless networks. Wireless security is demonstrated byapplying thecommon security standardslike(802.11WEPand 802.11iWPA,WPA2)and providesevaluationofsixof the most commonencryption algorithmsonpower consumption for wirelessdevices namely:AES (Rijndael),DES, 3DES,RC2, Blowfish,andRC6.Acomparison hasbeen conductedfor thoseencryptionalgorithms at differentsettingsfor each algorithmsuch asdifferent sizes of data blocks,different datatypes, batterypower consumption, datetransmission through wireless networkand finallyencryption/decryptionspeed.Experimentalresults are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of each algorithm
