Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves

This paper presents a lightweight hardware accelerator optimized for elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), supporting three standardized curves over the prime field GF(<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2^{255}-19$ </tex-math></inline-formula>): Weierstrass,...

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Main Authors: Piljoo Choi, Dong Kyue Kim
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11079988/
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author Piljoo Choi
Dong Kyue Kim
author_facet Piljoo Choi
Dong Kyue Kim
author_sort Piljoo Choi
collection DOAJ
description This paper presents a lightweight hardware accelerator optimized for elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), supporting three standardized curves over the prime field GF(<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2^{255}-19$ </tex-math></inline-formula>): Weierstrass, Montgomery, and Twisted Edwards. In implementations of these 25519 curves, the Montgomery ladder method with projective coordinates is widely adopted for efficient point multiplication (PntMlt); however, this work deliberately employs affine coordinates to reduce hardware complexity and area. Although several affine-coordinate optimization techniques were originally proposed for the NIST Curve P-256, they could not be directly applied to the targeted curves due to fundamental differences in the underlying finite field structure. To address this incompatibility, we reformulated the core mathematical expressions, enabling effective adaptation of the P-256-based methods to our context in a lightweight and efficient manner. The proposed architecture supports all three curves interchangeably through lightweight curve mapping, allowing integration into a wide range of ECC-based systems. Synthesized under a 180 nm application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) process technology, the design achieves full PntMlt computation within 1 ms at 200 MHz, consuming only 60 k gate equivalents.
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spelling doaj-art-752443f372dc4348becbaf0cb2f9a2352025-08-20T03:02:29ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011313381713382610.1109/ACCESS.2025.358873411079988Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 CurvesPiljoo Choi0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3354-8975Dong Kyue Kim1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5614-0449Department of Artificial Intelligence Convergence, Pukyong National University, Busan, South KoreaDepartment of Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, South KoreaThis paper presents a lightweight hardware accelerator optimized for elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), supporting three standardized curves over the prime field GF(<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2^{255}-19$ </tex-math></inline-formula>): Weierstrass, Montgomery, and Twisted Edwards. In implementations of these 25519 curves, the Montgomery ladder method with projective coordinates is widely adopted for efficient point multiplication (PntMlt); however, this work deliberately employs affine coordinates to reduce hardware complexity and area. Although several affine-coordinate optimization techniques were originally proposed for the NIST Curve P-256, they could not be directly applied to the targeted curves due to fundamental differences in the underlying finite field structure. To address this incompatibility, we reformulated the core mathematical expressions, enabling effective adaptation of the P-256-based methods to our context in a lightweight and efficient manner. The proposed architecture supports all three curves interchangeably through lightweight curve mapping, allowing integration into a wide range of ECC-based systems. Synthesized under a 180 nm application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) process technology, the design achieves full PntMlt computation within 1 ms at 200 MHz, consuming only 60 k gate equivalents.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11079988/Acceleratorelliptic curve cryptography (ECC)finite fieldmodular inversionpower analysis
spellingShingle Piljoo Choi
Dong Kyue Kim
Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
IEEE Access
Accelerator
elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)
finite field
modular inversion
power analysis
title Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
title_full Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
title_fullStr Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
title_full_unstemmed Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
title_short Lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator Over 25519 Curves
title_sort lightweight elliptic curve cryptography accelerator over 25519 curves
topic Accelerator
elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)
finite field
modular inversion
power analysis
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11079988/
work_keys_str_mv AT piljoochoi lightweightellipticcurvecryptographyacceleratorover25519curves
AT dongkyuekim lightweightellipticcurvecryptographyacceleratorover25519curves