Low-Cost Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Coprocessor for Smart Cards

This paper proposes different low-cost coprocessors for public key authentication on 8-bit smart cards. Elliptic curve cryptography is used for its efficiency per bit of key and the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm is chosen. For this functionality, an area constrained coprocessor is probably the best approach to perform the most computer-intensive operations at an acceptable speed considering the limited memory and power of the selected platform. For that purpose, the scalar point multiplication in GF(2m ) in both affine and projective coordinates was implemented in order to compare their performances with the same level of optimization and the same technology. A hardware/software co-design strategy was also used to avoid the need of a dedicated register file. The performances of the arithmetic units of both coprocessors were adjusted in order to achieve the same throughput. They were then implemented on a 0.13 μm CMOS process for the extension degrees 163, 193 and 233....

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ASAP
• Authors: Guerric Meurice de Dormale, Renaud Ambroise, David Bol, Jean-Jacques Quisquater, Jean-Didier Legat
• Keywords: Area Constrained Coprocessor, ASAP 2006, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm