skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Reliable and secure memristor-based chaotic communication against eavesdroppers and untrusted foundries
Abstract Chaos is a deterministic phenomenon that occurs in a non-linear dynamic system under specific condition when the trajectories of the state vector become periodic and extremely sensitive to the initial conditions. While traditional resistor-based chaotic communications are primarily concerned with the safe transfer of information across networks, the transceivers themselves can be compromised due to outsource manufacturing. With the growth of wireless sensors in resource-constrained implantable and wearable devices, chaotic communication may be a good fit if the information transmitted is reliable and the transmitter devices are secure. We believe that memristor, as the fourth fundamental two-terminal circuit element, can close the gap between reliable communication and secure manufacturing since its resistance can be programmed and saved by the designer and not the foundry. Thus, in this paper, we propose a memristor-based Chua’s chaotic transceiver that is both reliable in the presence of eavesdroppers and secure against untrusted foundries. Specifically, we consider the pair of transmitter and receiver under the same memristor value to show the possibility of uninterrupted communication as well as cases where different values of memristors are used to find out the possible range in which the message can still be meaningfully decoded. Experimental results confirm that both reliable communication and secure design can be achieved via our proposed memristor-based chaos transceivers.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2131156
PAR ID:
10437446
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Discover Internet of Things
Volume:
3
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2730-7239
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Chaos is a deterministic phenomenon that emerges under certain conditions in a nonlinear dynamic system when the trajectories of the state variables become periodic and highly sensitive to the initial conditions. Chaotic systems are flexible, and it has been shown that communication is possible using parametric feedback control. Chaos synchronization is the basis of using chaos in communication. Chaos synchronization refers to the characteristic that the trajectories of two identical chaotic systems, each with its own unique initial conditions, converge over time. In this paper, data extraction is performed on different chaotic equations implemented as circuits. Lorenz is the base system implemented in this paper, followed by Modified Lorenz, Chua’s, Lu¨’s, and Ro¨ssler systems. Additionally, more recent systems (e.g., SprottD Attractor) are included in the data extraction process. The robust system implementations provide an alternative to software chaos and architectures, and will further reduce the required power and area. These chaotic systems serve as alternatives for quantum era computing, which will cause synchronous and asynchronous techniques to fail. The data extracted organize different modes of chaos implementation based on the ease of their fabrication in integrated circuits. Performance metrics including power consumption, area, design load, noise, and robustness to process and temperature variant are extracted for each system to demonstrate a figure of merit. The figure of merit showcases chaos equations fitting to be implemented as a transmitter/receiver with a mode of chaotic ciphering in communication. 
    more » « less
  2. Our everyday lives are impacted by the widespread adoption of wireless communication systems integral to residential, industrial, and commercial settings. Devices must be secure and reliable to support the emergence of large scale heterogeneous networks. Higher layer encryption techniques such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) are vulnerable to threats, including even the latest WPA3 release. Physical layer security leverages existing components of the physical or PHY layer to provide a low-complexity solution appropriate for wireless devices. This work presents a PHY layer encryption technique based on frequency induction for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals to increase security against eavesdroppers. The secure transceiver consists of a key to frequency shift mapper, encryption module, and modified synchronizer for decryption. The system has been implemented on a Virtex-7 FPGA. The additional hardware overhead incurred on the Virtex-7 for both the transmitter and the receiver is low. Both simulation and hardware evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed system is capable of providing secure communication from an eavesdropper with no decrease in performance as compared with the baseline case of a standard OFDM transceiver. The techniques developed in this paper provide greater security to OFDM-based wireless communication systems. 
    more » « less
  3. Chaos is an interesting phenomenon for nonlinear systems that emerges due to its complex and unpredictable behavior. With the escalated use of low-powered edge-compute devices, data security at the edge develops the need for security in communication. The characteristic that Chaos synchronizes over time for two different chaotic systems with their own unique initial conditions, is the base for chaos implementation in communication. This paper proposes an encryption architecture suitable for communication of on-chip sensors to provide a POC (proof of concept) with security encrypted on the same chip using different chaotic equations. In communication, encryption is achieved with the help of microcontrollers or software implementations that use more power and have complex hardware implementation. The small IoT devices are expected to be operated on low power and constrained with size. At the same time, these devices are highly vulnerable to security threats, which elevates the need to have low power/size hardware-based security. Since the discovery of chaotic equations, they have been used in various encryption applications. The goal of this research is to take the chaotic implementation to the CMOS level with the sensors on the same chip. The hardware co-simulation is demonstrated on an FPGA board for Chua encryption/decryption architecture. The hardware utilization for Lorenz, SprottD, and Chua on FPGA is achieved with Xilinx System Generation (XSG) toolbox which reveals that Lorenz’s utilization is ~9% lesser than Chua’s. 
    more » « less
  4. Classical beamforming techniques rely on highly linear transmitters and receivers to allow phase-coherent combining at the transmitter and receiver. The transmitter uses eamforming to steer signal power towards the receiver, and the receiver uses beamforming to gather and coherently combine the signals from multiple receiver antennas. When the transmitters and receivers are instead constrained for power and cost reasons to be nonlinear one-bit devices, the potential advantages and performance metrics associated with beamforming are not as well understood. We define beamforming at the transmitter as a codebook design problem to maximize the minimum distance between codewords. We define beamforming at the receiver as the maximum likelihood detector of the transmitted codeword. We show that beamforming with one-bit transceivers is a constellation design problem, and that we can come within a few dB SNR of the capacity attained by linear transceivers. 
    more » « less
  5. The Global Wearable market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate in the next coming years and communication is a fundamental block in any wearable device. In communication, encryption methods are being used with the aid of microcontrollers or software implementations, which are power-consuming and incorporate complex hardware implementation. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are considered as resource-constrained devices that are expected to operate with low computational power and resource utilization criteria. At the same time, recent research has shown that IoT devices are highly vulnerable to emerging security threats, which elevates the need for low-power and small-size hardware-based security countermeasures. Chaotic encryption is a method of data encryption that utilizes chaotic systems and non-linear dynamics to generate secure encryption keys. It aims to provide high-level security by creating encryption keys that are sensitive to initial conditions and difficult to predict, making it challenging for unauthorized parties to intercept and decode encrypted data. Since the discovery of chaotic equations, there have been various encryption applications associated with them. In this paper, we comprehensively analyze the physical and encryption attacks on continuous chaotic systems in resource-constrained devices and their potential remedies. To this aim, we introduce different categories of attacks of chaotic encryption. Our experiments focus on chaotic equations implemented using Chua’s equation and leverages circuit architectures and provide simulations proof of remedies for different attacks. These remedies are provided to block the attackers from stealing users’ information (e.g., a pulse message) with negligible cost to the power and area of the design. 
    more » « less