A compact and efficient AES-32GF for encryption in small IoT devices

MethodsX. 2023 Nov 21:11:102491. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2023.102491. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Abstract

The phenomenal growth of resource constrained devices in IoT set ups has motivated the researchers to develop solutions for securing information flow. In this paper, we present a compact and efficient field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of AES with 32-bit data-path named, AES-32GF. The implementation is carried out on different Xilinx FPGAs. In FPGAs, utilization of slices and look up tables (LUTs) reflect on the compactness of the design. Numerical results show that lesser resources are required with smaller data path in comparison with the original standard. With the help of data path compression and Galois field implementation of the s-box resource consumption is minimized. S-box is the most resource consuming component in the AES structure. In our implementation, Artix-7 series FPGA for the same. It results in significant resource savings. In comparison to unrolled AES-128 architecture, it achieves 87 % resource savings. With 595 slices and 2.004 Gbps throughput, AES-32GF cipher achieves an efficiency of 3.37 Mbps/slice. It outperforms other designs in terms of efficiency. •A compact and efficient FPGA implementation of AES with 32-bit data-path has been proposed.•The proposed design utilizes data path compression and Galois field implementation of the s-box to minimize resource consumption.•With 595 slices and 2.004 Gbps throughput, AES-32GF cipher achieves an efficiency of 3.37 Mbps/slice.

Keywords: 32-bit data path; Advance encryption scheme (AES); Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA); Information security; Internet of things (IoT); Lightweight AES-32GF.