HPAZ: a High-throughput Pipeline Architecture of ZUC in Hardware

Abstract.In this paper, we propose a high-throughput pipeline architecture of the stream cipher ZUC which has been included in the security portfolio of 3GPP LTE-Advanced. In the literature, the schema with the highest throughput only implements the working stage of ZUC. The schemas which implement ZUC completely can only achieve a much lower throughput, since a self-feedback loop in the critical path significantly reduces operating frequency. In this paper we design a mixed two-stage pipeline architecture which not only completely implements ZUC but also significantly raises the throughput. We have imple-mented our architecture on FPGA and ASIC. On FPGA platform, the new architecture increases the throughput by 45%, compared with the latest work, and particularly the new architecture also saves nearly 12% of hardware resource. On 65nm ASIC technology, the throughput of the new design can up to 80Gbps, which is 2.7 times faster than the fastest one in the literature, in particularly, it also saves at least 40% of hardware resource. In addition to the academic design, compared with the fastest commercial design, the new architecture doubles the throughput of that. To the best of our knowledge, this evaluation result is so far the best outcome. It can be assumed that hardware implementations of ZUC following our architecture will fit in future LTE equipments bette

Hardware Implementations of the WG-16 Stream Cipher with Composite Field Arithmetic

The WG stream cipher family consists of stream ciphers based on the Welch-Gong (WG) transformations that are used as a nonlinear filter applied to the output of a linear feedback shift register (LFSR). The aim of this thesis is an exploration of the design space of the WG-16 stream cipher. Five different representations of the field elements were analyzed, namely the polynomial basis representation, the normal basis representation and three isomorphic tower field constructions of F216: F(((22)2)2)2, F(24)4 and F(28)2. Each design option begins with an in-depth description of different field constructions and their impact on the top-level WG transformation circuit. Normal basis representation of elements for each level of the tower was chosen for field constructions F(((22)2)2)2 and F(24)4, and a mixed basis, with polynomial basis for the lower and normal basis for the higher level of the tower for F(28)2. Representation of field elements affects the field arithmetic, which in turn affects the entire design. Targeting high throughput, pipelined architectures were developed, and pipelining was based on the particular field construction: each extension over the prime field offers a new pipelining possibility. Pipelining at a lower level of the tower field reduces the clock period. Most flexible pipelining options are possible for F(((22)2)2)2, a highly regular construction, which permits an algebraic optimization of the WG transformation resulting in two multiplications being removed. High speed, achieved by adequate pipelining granularity, and smaller area due to removed multipliers deem the F(((22)2)2)2 to be the most suitable field construction for the implementation of WG-16. The best WG-16 modules achieve a throughput of 222 Mbit/s with 476 slices used on the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA device xc6slx9 (using Xilinx Synthesis Tool (XST) for synthesis and ISE for implementation [47]) and a throughput of 529 Mbit/s with area cost of 12215 GEs for ASIC implementation, using the 65 nm CMOS technology (using Synopsys Design Compiler for synthesis [45] and Cadence SoC Encounter to complete the Place-and-Route phase)