High-throughput configurable SIMON architecture for flexible security

As the Internet of Things applications become mission-critical and their data more valuable, it becomes more and more essential to paramount their security. The security can be improved by using emerging light-weight ciphers. SIMON is a relatively recent family of light-weight ciphers which is proposed by the National Security Agency optimized for hardware platforms. In this paper, we propose an optimized hardware architecture for SIMON for high-throughput resource-constrained applications with multiple levels of security. Moreover, a configurable architecture with different operating modes is introduced for utilizing in applications requiring higher resistance to fault and power attacks. This architecture also supports an ultra-high-throughput mode for different key sizes. Implementation results of the proposed architectures on both ASIC and FPGA are reported. The comparison results show that our proposals outperform similar architectures in terms of some design metrics, e.g. throughput, which make it suitable for IoT applications. Finally, we implement practically our architecture on the Digilent-ZYBO board and report the experimental results.

Automated summary

This paper discusses the importance of using the SIMON encryption algorithm to enhance the security of IoT applications and proposes an optimized architecture for hardware platforms. The architecture has multiple operating modes, suitable for different application scenarios that require varying levels of security.