New Generation Computing, 23(2005)77-100
Ohmsha, Ltd. and Springer
Received
19 June 2003
Revised manuscript received 15 October 2003
Security has become a very critical issue in the provision of mobile services. The Open Mobile alliance (OMA) has specified a powerful security layer, the WTLS. In this paper, a VLSI architecture for the implementation of the WTLS integrity unit is proposed. The proposed architecture is reconfigurable in the sense that operates in three different modes: as Keyed-Hash Authentication Code (HMAC), as SHA-1 and MD5 hash functions, according to WTLS specifications. This multi-mode operation is achieved due to the reconfigurable applied design technique in the proposed architecture, which keeps the allocated area resources at a minimized level. The proposed architecture achieves high speed performance, due to the pipeline designed architecture. Especially, SHA-1 operation achieved throughput is equal to 1,7Gbps, while MD5 operation mode bit rate is equal to 2,1Gbps. The proposed architecture had been integrated by using VHDL and has been synthesized placed and routed in an FPGA device. Comparisons with related hash functions implementations have been done in terms of throughput, operating frequency, allocated area and Area-Delay product. The achieved performance of the SHA-1 operation mode is better at about 14-42 times compared with the other conventional works. In addition, MD5 performance is superior to the other works at about 6-18 times, in all of the cases. The proposed Integrity Unit is a very trustful and powerful solution for the WTLS layer. In addition, it can be integrated in security systems which are used for the implementation networks for wireless protocols, with special needs of integrity in data transmission.
Keywords:Open
Mobile Alliance, Wireless Application Protocol, Hardware Implementation, Security,
Hash Functions.