Embedding Digital Signature Using Encrypted-Hashing for Protection of DSP Cores in CE

Abstract

Reusable intellectual property (IP) cores from signal processing and multimedia form an integral part of consumer electronics (CE) systems. However, owing to the value it represents, it needs protection against important threats, such as piracy and illegal claim of ownership. This paper presents a novel multi-level encoding and encrypted-hash-based digital signature for protection of complex reusable IP core used in CE systems. For the first time in the literature, a digital signature-based IP core protection is proposed for digital signal processing (DSP) kernels. The proposed methodology is capable of encoding a DSP kernel application, followed by creating a digest of the encoded application to finally form a digital signature using RSA, which is subsequently implanted into the same design during architectural synthesis. The proposed approach on DSP benchmarks is capable of achieving higher robustness in terms of lower probability of coincidence - indicating stronger proof of authorship. The proposed approach achieves stronger robustness (on average by ~24.8%) as well as requires lesser storage hardware (on average reduction of ~14%) compared to similar prior work.