Low power scalable encryption for wireless systems

Abstract

Secure transmission of multimedia information (e.g., voice, video, data, etc.) is critical in many wireless network applications. Wireless transmission imposes constraints not found in typical wired systems such as low power consumption, tolerance to high bit error rates, and scalability. A variety of low power techniques have been developed to reduce the power of several encryption algorithms. One key idea involves exploiting the variation in computation requirements to dynamically vary the power supply voltage. Application of low power techniques to a wireless camera application yield more than an order of magnitude reduction in power consumption over conventional design methods. Test circuits for five algorithms have been fabricated in a 0.6 um process and the resulting power consumption of each is presented. In addition, a low power hybrid system that combines a power-efficient keystream generator with a secure pseudo-random seed generator is proposed that provides 1 Mbps data encryption at a total estimated power consumption of 150 uW.