Comparing VHDL based hardware implementation of blowfish and twofish algorithms for designing secured embedded system

Abstract

Embedded Systems are becoming integral part of our day to day life. These systems are more common in several automation applications, healthcare, utility systems and personal gadgets. In this age of wireless communication, embedded devices are used with wireless-networking technology for sharing and saving information. The information is exchanged globally and locally. Sensitive information should be secured before exchanging over internet or other networks. Cryptography is effective means for securing information by encryption on sender side and retrieving it by decryption on receiver end. Block ciphers are considered more secure and can be used in the design of secured embedded systems. These systems are highly constraint for area, memory, performance and hardware. Smaller size, low cost sub-systems are required for handling security in embedded applications. Blowfish and Twofish are block ciphers which are developed during NIST Advanced Encryption Standard competition. This paper compares two proven secured block ciphers focused on hardware implementation using VHDL. Hardware design blocks are modeled using hardware description language (VHDL) to meet required constraints of embedded systems design. Time required for encryption- decryption and throughput of the two algorithms are compared.