Energy-Efficient Word-Serial Processor for Field Multiplication and Squaring Suitable for Lightweight Authentication Schemes in RFID-Based IoT Applications

Abstract

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a crucial technology used in many IoT applications such as healthcare, asset tracking, logistics, supply chain management, assembly, manufacturing, and payment systems. Nonetheless, RFID-based IoT applications have many security and privacy issues restricting their use on a large scale. Many authors have proposed lightweight RFID authentication schemes based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) with a low-cost implementation to solve these issues. Finite-field multiplication are at the heart of these schemes, and their implementation significantly affects the system’s overall performance. This article presents a formal methodology for developing a word-based serial-in/serial-out semisystolic processor that shares hardware resources for multiplication and squaring operations in GF(2n). The processor concurrently executes both operations and hence reduces the execution time. Furthermore, sharing the hardware resources provides savings in the area and consumed energy. The acquired implementation results for the field size n=409 indicate that the proposed structure achieves a significant reduction in the area–time product and consumed energy over the previously published designs by at least 32.3% and 70%, respectively. The achieved results make the proposed design more suitable to realize cryptographic primitives in resource-constrained RFID devices.