J3Gen : a PRNG for low-cost passive RFID

Joan Melia-Segui (1, 2) , Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro (3, 4, 5, 1) , Jordi Herrera-Joancomarti (1, 6)

1 Internet Interdisciplinary Institute
2 Department of Communications and Information Technologies
3 TSP - RST - Département Réseaux et Services de Télécommunications
4 SAMOVAR - Services répartis, Architectures, MOdélisation, Validation, Administration des Réseaux
5 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
6 dEIC - Department of Information and Communications Engineering

Pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) is the main security tool in low-cost passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies, such as EPC Gen2. We present a lightweight PRNG design for low-cost passive RFID tags, named J3Gen. J3Gen is based on a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) configured with multiple feedback polynomials. The polynomials are alternated during the generation of sequences via a physical source of randomness. J3Gen successfully handles the inherent linearity of LFSR based PRNGs and satisfies the statistical requirements imposed by the EPC Gen2 standard. A hardware implementation of J3Gen is presented and evaluated with regard to different design parameters, defining the key-equivalence security and nonlinearity of the design. The results of a SPICE simulation confirm the power-consumption suitability of the proposal.

Mots clés: Security; LFSR; Multiple-polynomial; RFID; EPC Gen2

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Joan Melia-Segui, Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro, Jordi Herrera-Joancomarti. J3Gen : a PRNG for low-cost passive RFID. Sensors, 2013, 13 (3), pp.3816-3830. ⟨10.3390/s130303816⟩. ⟨hal-00846567⟩