Dynamic current mode logic based flip‐flop design for robust and low‐power security integrated circuits

Abstract

Side-channel analysis (SCA) is a powerful technique to reveal the secrets using detectable physical leakages from logic elements, which brings severe security threats to modern circuits. To alleviate this problem, applying cell-level countermeasure is usually a suitable solution, which is mainly implemented as dual-rail precharge logic. Mace et al. has the proposed dynamic current mode logic (DyCML) scheme as a novel technology to resist SCA, whose power consumption is constant regardless of the data processed. However, the DyCML-based sequential elements are still in blank field. So, we have implemented a novel flip-flop compatible with DyCML, whose enhanced security has been proved by corresponding simulations.