Substitution-permutation network

In cryptography, an SP-network, or substitution-permutation network (SPN), is a series of linked mathematical operations used in block cipher algorithms such as AES (Rijndael), 3-Way, Kuznyechik, PRESENT, SAFER, SHARK, and Square.

Such a network takes a block of the plaintext and the key as inputs, and applies several alternating "rounds" or "layers" of substitution boxes (S-boxes) and permutation boxes (P-boxes) to produce the ciphertext block. The S-boxes and P-boxes transform (sub-)blocks of input bits into output bits. It is common for these transformations to be operations that are efficient to perform in hardware, such as exclusive or (XOR) and bitwise rotation. The key is introduced in each round, usually in the form of "round keys" derived from it. (In some designs, the S-boxes themselves depend on the key.)

Decryption is done by simply reversing the process (using the inverses of the S-boxes and P-boxes and applying the round keys in reversed order).

An S-box substitutes a small block of bits (the input of the S-box) by another block of bits (the output of the S-box). This substitution should be one-to-one, to ensure invertibility (hence decryption). In particular, the length of the output should be the same as the length of the input (the picture on the right has S-boxes with 4 input and 4 output bits), which is different from S-boxes in general that could also change the length, as in DES (Data Encryption Standard), for example. An S-box is usually not simply a permutation of the bits. Rather, a good S-box will have the property that changing one input bit will change about half of the output bits (or an avalanche effect). It will also have the property that each output bit will depend on every input bit.

...
Wikipedia