FPGA implementation of elliptic curve cryptography engine for personal communication systems

Abstract

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which allows smaller key length as compared to conventional public key cryptosystems, has become a very attractive choice in wireless mobile communication technology and personal communication systems. Any cryptosystem requires a very quick computation in very short time to get an optimal efficiency. One of the options could be to implement the overall cryptosystem into FPGA to reduce the execution time dramatically to pledge the efficiency. In this research, the ECC encryption engine has been implemented in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) for two different key sizes, which are 131 bits and 163 bits. The cryptosystem, which has been implemented on Altera’s EPF10K200SBC600-1, has taken 5945 and 6913 logic cells out of 9984 for the key sizes of 131 bits and 163 bits respectively with an operating frequency 43 MHz, and performs point multiplication operation in 11.3 ms and 14.9 ms for 131 bits and 163 bits implementation respectively. In terms of speed, the cryptosystem implemented on FPGA is 8 times faster than the software implementation of the same system. Key words: Encryption, DES, 3DES, FPGA, synthesis, hardware.