The DES variant DESXL was, similar to DESL, designed by the Communication Security Group at the Ruhr-University Bochum. DESXL is the DESX variant of DESL, i.e. the plaintext x is XORed with the pre-whitening key K1, then it is encrypted with DESL and the key KDESL, and finally the result is XORed with the post-whitening key K2.
DESXL(x) = K2 + DESLKDESL(x + K1)
There are various applications for DESXL imaginable, ranging from RFID-tags to constrained devices in general.
The European research project UbiSec&Sens (www.ist-ubisecsens.org), where the Security Group from Bochum is one of eight partners, aims to develop a toolbox of security components for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). WSNs are build up of many (a few tens till several tens of thousands) mini computers with only very small CPU performance. DESXL will be a basic component of this security toolbox.
For further information see: http://www.crypto.rub.de/en_publications.html