Error Detection Architectures for Hardware/Software Co-Design Approaches of Number-Theoretic Transform

Number-theoretic transform (NTT) is an efficient polynomial multiplication technique of lattice-based post-quantum cryptography including Kyber which is standardized as the NIST key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) in 2022. Prominent NTT architectures have recently been implemented on hardware/software coprocessors. In this article, we introduce new error detection schemes embedded efficiently in the NTT accelerator architecture, detecting both transient and permanent faults. By encoding the operands with two approaches, i.e., negating and swapping, we detect the faults in such constructions after recomputing and decoding. Through simulation, our schemes show high error coverage for the stuck-at fault model. Moreover, we implement the schemes on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and assure that acceptable overhead is achieved for performance and implementation metrics. The low overhead and high efficiency of our schemes make them suitable for various constrained usage models. Additionally, our schemes are also applicable to similar classical and post-quantum sub-blocks to obtain more reliable respective hardware constructions.