Low-Cost Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Wireless Sensor Networks

This work describes a low-cost Public-Key Cryptography (PKC) based solution for security services such as key-distribution and authentication as required for wireless sensor networks. We propose a custom hardware assisted approach to implement Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) in order to obtain stronger cryptography as well as to minimize the power. Our compact and low-power ECC processor contains a Modular Arithmetic Logic Unit (MALU) for ECC field arithmetic. The best solution features 6718 gates for the MALU and control unit (data memory not included) in 0.13 m CMOS technology over the field F2131 , which provides a reasonable level of security for the time being. In this case the consumed power is less than 30 W when operating frequency is 500 kHz.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ESAS
• Authors: Lejla Batina, Nele Mentens, Kazuo Sakiyama, Bart Preneel, Ingrid Verbauwhede
• Keywords: Elliptic Curve Cryptography, ESAS 2006, Low-cost Public-key Cryptography, Low-power Ecc Processor, Sensor Networks