Secure transmission of gate level description

Modern system-on-chip (SoC) design cycle strongly depends on secure exchange of intellectual properties (IPs) between core-authors, integrators, foundries etc. However the sharing of IP between authorities involves high security risks in today's competitive market. Since IP usually involves large amount of data, conventional message encryption techniques needs improvised use in this case. In this paper we have proposed a technique for secure transmission of the gate level description of a combinational circuit over public network. An easy to implement and computationally inexpensive encryption technique is used to encrypt the description. It enables intended receiver to decrypt the description using owner's certificate. It also facilitates in identifying any intentional modification in the description made by any unauthorized party. Experimental results show that the proposed technique can withstand variety of attacks from intruders.