Bilinear pairings are being used in ingenious ways to solve various protocol problems. Much research has been done on improving the efficiency of pairing computations. This thesis gives an introduction to the Tate pairing and some variants including the ate pairing, Vercauteren's pairing, and the R-ate pairing. We describe the Barreto-Naehrig (BN) family of pairing-friendly curves, and analyze three different coordinates systems (affine, projective, and jacobian) for implementing the R-ate pairing. Finally, we examine some recent work for speeding the pairing computation and provide improved estimates of the pairing costs on a particular BN curve.

Bilinear pairings are being used in ingenious ways to solve various protocol problems. Much research has been done on improving the efficiency of pairing computations. This thesis gives an introduction to the Tate pairing and some variants including the ate pairing, Vercauteren's pairing, and the R-ate pairing. We describe the Barreto-Naehrig (BN) family of pairing-friendly curves, and analyze three different coordinates systems (affine, projective, and jacobian) for implementing the R-ate pairing. Finally, we examine some recent work for speeding the pairing computation and provide improved estimates of the pairing costs on a particular BN curve.