Word-Based Systolic Processor for Field Multiplication and Squaring Suitable for Cryptographic Processors in Resource-Constrained IoT Systems

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) technology provides practical solutions for a wide range of applications, including but not limited to, smart homes, smart cities, intelligent grid, intelligent transportation, and healthcare. Security and privacy issues in IoT are considered significant challenges that prohibit its utilization in most of these applications, especially relative to healthcare applications. Cryptographic protocols should be applied at the different layers of IoT framework, especially edge devices, to solve all security concerns. Finite-field arithmetic, particularly field multiplication and squaring, represents the core of most cryptographic protocols and their implementation primarily affects protocol performance. In this paper, we present a compact and combined two-dimensional word-based serial-in/serial-out systolic processor for field multiplication and squaring over GF(2m). The proposed structure features design flexibility to manage hardware utilization, execution time, and consumed energy. Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) Implementation results of the proposed word-serial design and the competitive ones at different embedded word-sizes show that the proposed structure realizes considerable saving in the area and consumed energy, up to 93.7% and 98.2%, respectively. The obtained results enable the implementation of restricted cryptographic primitives in resource-constrained IoT edge devices such as wearable and implantable medical devices, smart cards, and wireless sensor nodes.