ECC Is Ready for RFID --- A Proof in Silicon

  • Authors:
  • Daniel Hein;Johannes Wolkerstorfer;Norbert Felber

  • Affiliations:
  • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, IIS, Zürich, Switzerland 8092;Graz University of Technology, IAIK, Graz, Austria 8010;Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, IIS, Zürich, Switzerland 8092

  • Venue:
  • Selected Areas in Cryptography
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper presents the silicon chip ECCon, an Elliptic Curve Cryptography processor for application in Radio-Frequency Identification. The circuit is fabricated on a 180 nm CMOS technology. ECCon features small silicon size (15K GE) and has low power consumption (8.57 μW). It computes 163-bit ECC point-multiplications in 296k cycles and has an ISO 18000-3 RFID interface. ECCon's very low and nearly constant power consumption makes it the first ECC chip that can be powered passively. This major breakthrough is possible because of a radical change in hardware architecture. The ECCon datapath operates on 16-bit words, which is similar to ECC instruction-set extensions. A number of innovations on the algorithmic and on the architectural level substantially increased the efficiency of 163-bit ECC. ECCon is the first demonstration that the proof of origin via electronic signatures can be realized on RFID tags in 180 nm CMOS and below.