FPGA-based performance analysis of stream ciphers ZUC, Snow3g, Grain V1, Mickey V2, Trivium and E0

Abstract

In this paper, the hardware implementations of six representative stream ciphers are compared in terms of performance, consumed area and the throughput-to-area ratio. The stream ciphers used for the comparison are ZUC, Snow3g, Grain V1, Mickey V2, Trivium and E0. ZUC, Snow3g and E0 have been used for the security part of well known standards, especially wireless communication protocols. In addition, Grain V1, Mickey V2 and Trivium are currently selected as the final portfolio of stream ciphers for Profile 2 (Hardware) by the eStream project. The designs were implemented by using VHDL language and for the hardware implementations a FPGA device was used. The highest throughput has been achieved by Snow3g with 3330Mbps at 104MHz and the lowest throughput has been achieved by E0 with 187Mbps at 187MHz. Also, the most efficient cipher for hardware implementation in terms of throughput-to-area ratio is Mickey V2 cipher while the worst cipher for hardware implementation is Grain V1.