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Parallel-Pipelined-Memory-Based Blowfish Design with Reduced FPGA Utilization for Secure ZigBee Real-Time Transmission

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Abstract

Data security is currently become a serious concern in wireless communication system for both the users and providers. Without a secure medium, the data transmission is exposed to various types of wireless attacks. Therefore, this paper focuses on the development of a high performance parallel-pipelined-memory-based (P2M) Blowfish as a security design with reduced field programmable gate array (FPGA) utilization, which is the best security design to be embedded in the mobile devices. Through FPGA platform, the performance of the proposed Blowfish shows that a throughput increases by 10.5%, with the hardware utilization and power consumption decrease by 3.5% and 21%, respectively. The P2M Blowfish was validated in two-way communication channel by using FPGA-based radio platform together with ZigBee technology and the real-time transmission was measured in terms of bit-error-rate, received power and communication range. These characteristics have proven that the proposed P2M Blowfish possesses the ability to replace the advanced encryption standard which is known as a complex algorithm employed by most of the wireless communication standards.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) ScienceFund Research Grant (Project No. 06-01-05-SF0640) and the Universiti Sains Malaysia Research University Grant for Individuals (RUI) (Project No. 1001/PELECT/814241).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Centre (CEDEC), Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300, Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia

    Rafidah Ahmad & Asrulnizam Abd. Manaf

  2. Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University, Persiaran Multimedia, 63100, Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia

    Daniel Kho

  3. Auto-ID Laboratory, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300, Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia

    Widad Ismail

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  1. Rafidah Ahmad
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  2. Daniel Kho
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  3. Asrulnizam Abd. Manaf
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  4. Widad Ismail
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Correspondence to Rafidah Ahmad.

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Ahmad, R., Kho, D., Abd. Manaf, A. et al. Parallel-Pipelined-Memory-Based Blowfish Design with Reduced FPGA Utilization for Secure ZigBee Real-Time Transmission. Wireless Pers Commun 104, 471–489 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-018-6031-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-018-6031-8

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