Efficient Power-Analysis-Resistant Dual-Field Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Processor Using Heterogeneous Dual-Processing-Element Architecture

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for portable applications is in high demand to ensure secure information exchange over wireless channels. Because of the high computational complexity of ECC functions, dedicated hardware architecture is essential to provide sufficient ECC performance. Besides, crypto-ICs are vulnerable to side-channel information leakage because the private key can be revealed via power-analysis attacks. In this paper, a new heterogeneous dual-processing-element (dual-PE) architecture and a priority-oriented scheduling of right-to-left double-and-add-always EC scalar multiplication (ECSM) with randomized processing technique are proposed to achieve a power-analysis-resistant dual-field ECC (DF-ECC) processor. For this dual-PE design, a memory hierarchy with local memory synchronization scheme is also exploited to improve data bandwidth. Fabricated in a 90-nm CMOS technology, a 0.4- mm
²
160-b DF-ECC chip can achieve 0.34/0.29 ms 11.7/9.3 μJ for one GF(p)/GF(2
^m
) ECSM. Compared to other related works, our approach is advantageous not only in hardware efficiency but also in protection against power-analysis attacks.