HiPAcc-LTE: An Integrated High Performance Accelerator for 3GPP LTE Stream Ciphers

Abstract

Stream ciphers SNOW 3G and ZUC are the major players in the domain of next generation mobile security as both of them have been included in the security portfolio of 3GPP LTE-Advanced, the potential candidate for 4G mobile broadband communication standard. In this paper, we propose HiPAcc-LTE, a high performance integrated design that combines the two ciphers in hardware, based on their structural similarities. The integrated architecture reduces the area overhead significantly compared to two distinct cores, and also provides almost double throughput in terms of keystream generation. This is in comparison with the state-of-the-art implementations of the individual ciphers, both in the academic literature as well as in the commercial domain. We present detailed description of the design idea, optimization techniques and comparison results in this paper. Long term vision of this hardware integration approach for cryptographic primitives is to build a flexible core supporting multiple designs having similar algorithmic structures.