Scalable and parameterized hardware implementation of Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm over Prime Fields

Elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) is similar to Digital signature algorithm (DSA) except that the operations in the former are defined using points on Elliptic curve. This paper presents implementation details of ECDSA in prime fields over NIST recommended field sizes starting from 192 to 521 bits. The implementation uses a hardware-software co-design approach on reconfigurable hardware platform (Xilinx xc6v1x240T-lff1156). Some of the associated operations like private key generation, binary weight calculation and SHA message formation are performed in software using Microblaze (soft core of Xilinx) The software portion of the FPGA is utilized for passing parameters to the hardware portion of the FPGA where signature generation and verification are performed. The timing performance for signature generation and verification in field size of 192 bits is 0.7 ms and 0.844 ms respectively. Similarly, the ECDSA implementation in the field size of 521 bits requires 9.145 ms for signature generation and 11.92 ms for signature verification. This paper presents a parameterized and scalable architecture for ECDSA over prime fields.