Low-cost and low-area implementation of AES-CCM core compliant with IEEE 802.15.4 standard

Abstract

The need of data protection is gradually increasing in storage and communication systems due to the increase in data breach incidents such as data hacking, leaking, and spilling. Especially in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) where the devices are generally used in trustless environment, the security is a crucial issue. The commonly known method to prevent data breach is to use both encryption and authentication and many WSN standards support these security features. One of the most notable encryption algorithms is Ad-vanced Encryption Standard (AES) which is a symmetric-key block cipher algorithm selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. However, since AES algorithm only ensures confiden-tiality of data, Counter with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code (CCM) mode, is employed with AES, abbreviated AES-CCM, to provide both confidentiality and authenticity of data. AES-CCM is widely used for media content protection in wireless communication and is supported in IEEE 802.15.4 WSN standard as the security feature.In this thesis, two designs were proposed to achieve low-cost and low-area AES-CCM core architec-ture while satisfying restrictions and limitations from IEEE 802.15.4 WSN standard. AES-CCM architecture is implemented with 8-bit data path instead of the generic 128-bit or 32-bit data path to reduce the hardware complexity. The other design involves designing AES algorithm in unified transformation module. In addi-tion, common subexpression elimination technique is applied to the unified transformation module to reduce the number of hardware operator resources.