Design aspects for upgrading firmware of a resource constrained device in the field

Upgrading firmware of a resource constrained embedded device installed in the field is the necessity of the present day embedded systems. Taking device to the manufacturer or manufacturer reaching to the field becomes difficult once the embedded device is installed. The feature of infield firmware upgrade in the embedded device makes the task of upgrading firmware easy. Although, the process of upgrading gives rise to certain issues related to safety and security. In spite of lot of research to address these problems, safety and security of upgrade process remains challenging. This paper discusses the architectural design aspects to develop an in-field firmware upgrade system for embedded device based on ARM platform using Ethernet medium. Our implementation approach for ARM based device provides solutions to most of the safety issues occurring during in-field firmware update. The security is achieved using lightweight encryption algorithms PRESENT and CLEFIA. The performance comparison for the two algorithms is presented. Our architecture provides feature of normal working of device when firmware update is done whereas many such systems halt their normal functionality. The previous firmware image is also retained and can be switched back called as Rollback firmware in our approach.