An ultra-lightweight transmitter for contactless rapid identification of embedded IP in FPGA

Lilian Bossuet (1) , Pierre Bayon (2) , Viktor Fischer (1)

1 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien
2 Brightsight

This letter presents the first ultra-lightweight transmitter based on electromagnetic emanation to send embedded intellectual properties (IP) identity (ID) quickly and discreetly. The proposed solution is based on a binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) transmitter that ensures an exceptionally high data rate. In addition, we present a coherent demodulation method using slippery window spectral analysis to recover data outside the device. The hardware resources occupied by the transmitter represent less than 0.022% of a 130 nm Microsemi Fusion FPGA. The experimental bitrate of the data transmission is around 500 times higher than the bitrate available for other state of the art spy circuitry using power consumption. In comparison with other works, our proposal goes clearly towards using a spy circuit in an industrial context for IP protection.

Mots clés: IP protection; side channel; electromagnetic emanation analysis

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Electronique; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Lilian Bossuet, Pierre Bayon, Viktor Fischer. An ultra-lightweight transmitter for contactless rapid identification of embedded IP in FPGA. IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, 2015, 7 (4), pp.97-100. ⟨10.1109/LES.2015.2454236⟩. ⟨hal-01218761⟩