Implementation and Benchmarking of a Crypto Processor for a NB-IoT SoC Platform

The goal of this Master’s Thesis is to investigate the implementation of cryptographic algorithms for IoT and how these encryption systems can be integrated in a NarrowBand IoT platform. Following 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications, the Evolved Packet System (EPS) Encryption Algorithms (EEA) and EPS Integrity Algorithms (EIA) have been implemented and tested. The latter are based on three different ciphering algorithms, used as keystream generators: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), SNOW 3G and ZUC. These algorithms are used in Long Term Evolution (LTE) terminals to perform user data confidentiality and integrity protection. In the first place, a thorough study of the algorithms has been conducted. Then, we have used Matlab to generate a reference model of the algorithms and the High-Level Synthesis (HLS) design flow to generate the Register-Transfer Level (RTL) description from algorithmic descriptions in C++. The keystream generation and integrity blocks have been tested at RTL level. The confidentiality block has been described along with the control, datapath and interface block at a RTL level using System C language. The hardware blocks have been integrated into a processor capable of performing hardware confidentiality and integrity protection: the crypto processor. This Intellectual Property (IP) has been integrated and tested in a cycle accurate virtual platform. The outcome of this Master’s Thesis is a crypto processor capable of performing the proposed confidentiality and integrity algorithms under request.The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the big revolutions that our society is expected to go through in the near future. This represents the inter-connection of devices, sensors, controllers, and any items, refereed as things, through a network that enables machine-to-machine communication. The number of connected devices will greatly increase. The applications taking advantage of IoT will enable to develop a great amount of technologies such as smart homes, smart cities and intelligent transportation. The possibilities allowed are huge and not yet fully explored. Picture yourself in the near future having a nice dinner with some friends. Then, you suddenly recall that your parking ticket expires in five minutes and unfortunately your car is parked some blocks away. You are having a good time and feel lazy to walk all the way to where you parked your car to pay for a time extension. Luckily enough, the parking meter is part of the IoT network and allows you, with the recently installed new application in your smart-phone, to pay this bill from anywhere you are. This payment will be sent to the parking meter and your time will be extended. Problem solved, right? Well, the risk comes when you perform your payment, not knowing that your "worst enemy" has interceded this communication and is able to alter your transaction. Perhaps, this individual decides to cancel your payment and you will have to pay a fine. Or even worse, this person steals your banking details and uses your money to take the vacations you’ve always wanted. There are many examples in our everyday life where we expose our personal information. With an increasing number of devices existing and using wireless communications without the action of an human, the security is a key aspect of IoT. This Master’s Thesis addresses the need to cover these security breaches in a world where an increasing amount of devices are communicating with each other. With the expansion of IoT where billions of devices will be connected wirelessly, our data will be widely spread over the air. The user will not be able to protect their sensible data without these securing capabilities. Therefore, different security algorithms used in today’s and tomorrow’s wireless technologies have been implemented on a chip to secure the communication. The confidentiality and integrity algorithms aim to solve the two aspects of the problem: protect the secrecy of banking details and prevent the alteration of the communication’s information. In this Master’s Thesis we have developed a hardware processor for securing data during a wireless communication, specifically designed for IoT applications. The developed system is realized with minimal area and power in mind, so that they can be fitted even in the smallest devices. We have compared many different hardware architectures, and after exploring many possible implementations, we have implemented the security algorithms on a hardware platform. We believe the content of this Thesis work is of great interest to anybody interested in hardware security applied to the IoT field. Furthermore, due to the processes and methodology used in this work, it will also be of interest to people who want to know more about how higher level programming languages can be used to describe such a specialized circuit, like one performing security algorithms. Finally, people interested in hardware and software co-simulation will find in this project a good example of the utilization of such system modeling technique

El rol del educador físico en el equipo interdisciplinario de cirugía bariátrica

Hoy, no resultaría difícil hallar literatura referida a los beneficios del Ejercicio Físico (EF), en la prevención y tratamiento de metabolopatías, obesidad, osteoporosis, fibromialgía, hipertensión arterial, artropatías periféricas y cardiopatías, sarcopenia, síndrome de fragilidad, disfunciones del suelo pélvico, deterioro cognitivo, etc.. Esto pone a los Educadores Físicos (EdF) (Maestros, Profesores, Licenciados), frente a una responsabilidad de la cual hay que tomar conciencia, ya sea que labore en un patio, en un gimnasio, en un club, en un hospital o en una plaza; es decir en una nueva posición en relación a los servicios de salud y a las necesidades de la población; que merece un importante ejercicio de responsabilidad. En la ciudad de La Plata, donde desempeñamos nuestra tarea, vivimos una fuerte discusión sobre quién y cómo debe prescribir el EF; existiendo ámbitos o equipos de salud que se encuentran a la avanzada, habiendo superado ampliamente la discusión de mención y donde cada profesional actualiza su rol, en el marco de equipos interdisciplinarios. El presente trabajo relata la experiencia recogida por los profesores de EF en el grupo BAROS La Plata, institución integrada por un equipo interdisciplinario, dedicado a brindar atención integral al paciente con obesidad que requiere de una cirugía para poder bajar de peso. Se fundamentará el concepto de interdisciplina en Obesidad, así como el por qué de la incorporación de EdF y el EF en el equipo de salud.Departamento de Educación Físic

Multiple Myeloma Treatment in Real-world Clinical Practice : Results of a Prospective, Multinational, Noninterventional Study

Funding Information: The authors would like to thank all patients and their families and all the EMMOS investigators for their valuable contributions to the study. The authors would like to acknowledge Robert Olie for his significant contribution to the EMMOS study. Writing support during the development of our report was provided by Laura Mulcahy and Catherine Crookes of FireKite, an Ashfield company, a part of UDG Healthcare plc, which was funded by Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc, and Janssen Global Services, LLC. The EMMOS study was supported by research funding from Janssen Pharmaceutical NV and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Funding Information: The authors would like to thank all patients and their families and all the EMMOS investigators for their valuable contributions to the study. The authors would like to acknowledge Robert Olie for his significant contribution to the EMMOS study. Writing support during the development of our report was provided by Laura Mulcahy and Catherine Crookes of FireKite, an Ashfield company, a part of UDG Healthcare plc, which was funded by Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc, and Janssen Global Services, LLC. The EMMOS study was supported by research funding from Janssen Pharmaceutical NV and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Funding Information: M.M. has received personal fees from Janssen, Celgene, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Novartis, and Takeda and grants from Janssen and Sanofi during the conduct of the study. E.T. has received grants from Janssen and personal fees from Janssen and Takeda during the conduct of the study, and grants from Amgen, Celgene/Genesis, personal fees from Amgen, Celgene/Genesis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, and Glaxo-Smith Kline outside the submitted work. M.V.M. has received personal fees from Janssen, Celgene, Amgen, and Takeda outside the submitted work. M.C. reports honoraria from Janssen, outside the submitted work. M. B. reports grants from Janssen Cilag during the conduct of the study. M.D. has received honoraria for participation on advisory boards for Janssen, Celgene, Takeda, Amgen, and Novartis. H.S. has received honoraria from Janssen-Cilag, Celgene, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, and Takeda outside the submitted work. V.P. reports personal fees from Janssen during the conduct of the study and grants, personal fees, and nonfinancial support from Amgen, grants and personal fees from Sanofi, and personal fees from Takeda outside the submitted work. W.W. has received personal fees and grants from Amgen, Celgene, Novartis, Roche, Takeda, Gilead, and Janssen and nonfinancial support from Roche outside the submitted work. J.S. reports grants and nonfinancial support from Janssen Pharmaceutical during the conduct of the study. V.L. reports funding from Janssen Global Services LLC during the conduct of the study and study support from Janssen-Cilag and Pharmion outside the submitted work. A.P. reports employment and shareholding of Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) during the conduct of the study. C.C. reports employment at Janssen-Cilag during the conduct of the study. C.F. reports employment at Janssen Research and Development during the conduct of the study. F.T.B. reports employment at Janssen-Cilag during the conduct of the study. The remaining authors have stated that they have no conflicts of interest. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 The AuthorsMultiple myeloma (MM) remains an incurable disease, with little information available on its management in real-world clinical practice. The results of the present prospective, noninterventional observational study revealed great diversity in the treatment regimens used to treat MM. Our results also provide data to inform health economic, pharmacoepidemiologic, and outcomes research, providing a framework for the design of protocols to improve the outcomes of patients with MM. Background: The present prospective, multinational, noninterventional study aimed to document and describe real-world treatment regimens and disease progression in multiple myeloma (MM) patients. Patients and Methods: Adult patients initiating any new MM therapy from October 2010 to October 2012 were eligible. A multistage patient/site recruitment model was applied to minimize the selection bias; enrollment was stratified by country, region, and practice type. The patient medical and disease features, treatment history, and remission status were recorded at baseline, and prospective data on treatment, efficacy, and safety were collected electronically every 3 months. Results: A total of 2358 patients were enrolled. Of these patients, 775 and 1583 did and did not undergo stem cell transplantation (SCT) at any time during treatment, respectively. Of the patients in the SCT and non-SCT groups, 49%, 21%, 14%, and 15% and 57%, 20%, 12% and 10% were enrolled at treatment line 1, 2, 3, and ≥ 4, respectively. In the SCT and non-SCT groups, 45% and 54% of the patients had received bortezomib-based therapy without thalidomide/lenalidomide, 12% and 18% had received thalidomide/lenalidomide-based therapy without bortezomib, and 30% and 4% had received bortezomib plus thalidomide/lenalidomide-based therapy as frontline treatment, respectively. The corresponding proportions of SCT and non-SCT patients in lines 2, 3, and ≥ 4 were 45% and 37%, 30% and 37%, and 12% and 3%, 33% and 27%, 35% and 32%, and 8% and 2%, and 27% and 27%, 27% and 23%, and 6% and 4%, respectively. In the SCT and non-SCT patients, the overall response rate was 86% to 97% and 64% to 85% in line 1, 74% to 78% and 59% to 68% in line 2, 55% to 83% and 48% to 60% in line 3, and 49% to 65% and 36% and 45% in line 4, respectively, for regimens that included bortezomib and/or thalidomide/lenalidomide. Conclusion: The results of our prospective study have revealed great diversity in the treatment regimens used to manage MM in real-life practice. This diversity was linked to factors such as novel agent accessibility and evolving treatment recommendations. Our results provide insight into associated clinical benefits.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Design of an area efficient crypto processor for 3GPP-LTE NB-IoT devices

Providing information security is crucial for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, platforms in which the available power budget is very limited. This paper tackles this challenge and presents a cryptographic processor compliant with the security algorithms specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) standard. The proposed processor has been optimized to the needs of the low end portfolio technologies that compose the IoT market, which addresses low-area, low-cost and low-data rate applications. Operation analysis at the algorithm-level and hardware sharing at the architecture-level have enabled extensive area reduction. The cryptographic processor has been described using the High-Level Synthesis (HLS) design flow and integrated with a general purpose processor in a cycle accurate virtual platform. The design achieves a reduction of area ranging from 5% to 42% in comparison to similar work. Synthesis results using a 65-nm CMOS technology show that the processor has a hardware cost of 53.6 kGE, and is capable of performing at 52.4 Mbps for the block cipher and 800 Mbps for the stream cipher algorithms at a 100 MHz clock

Implementation of an area efficient crypto processor for a NB-IoT SoC platform

This paper presents a cryptographic processor compliant with the security algorithms specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications for Long Term Evolution (LTE). The proposed processor has been adapted to the needs of the low end portfolio technologies that compose the Internet of Things (IoT) market, which addresses low-Area, low-cost and low-data rate applications. The cryptographic processor has been described using the High-Level Synthesis (HLS) design flow and integrated with a CPU in a cycle accurate virtual platform. Various architectural optimizations are proposed in order to achieve a reduction of area ranging from 5% to 42% in comparison to similar work. In a 65-nm CMOS technology, the processor has a size of 53.6 kGE, and is capable of performing at 52.4 Mbps for the block cipher and 800 Mbps for the stream cipher algorithms at a 100 MHz clock

Multiparameter flow cytometric remission is the most relevant prognostic factor for multiple myeloma patients who undergo autologous stem cell transplantation

Minimal residual disease (MRD) assessment is standard in many hematologic malignancies but is considered investigational in multiple myeloma (MM). We report a prospective analysis of the prognostic importance of MRD detection by multiparameter flow cytometry (MFC) in 295 newly diagnosed MM patients uniformly treated in the GEM2000 protocol VBMCP/VBAD induction plus autologous stem cell transplantation [ASCT]). MRD status by MFC was determined at day 100 after ASCT. Progression-free survival (PFS; median 71 vs 37 months, P < .001) and overall survival (OS; median not reached vs 89 months, P = .002) were longer in patients who were MRD negative versus MRD positive at day 100 after ASCT. Similar prognostic differentiation was seen in 147 patients who achieved immunofixation-negative complete response after ASCT. Moreover, MRD− immunofixation-negative (IFx−) patients and MRD− IFx+ patients had significantly longer PFS than MRD+ IFx− patients. Multivariate analysis identified MRD status by MFC at day 100 after ASCT as the most important independent prognostic factor for PFS (HR = 3.64, P = .002) and OS (HR = 2.02, P = .02). Our findings demonstrate the clinical importance of MRD evaluation by MFC, and illustrate the need for further refinement of MM re-sponse criteria. This trial is registered at http://clinicaltrials.gov under identifier NCT00560053