Fast hardware implementation of ECDSA signature scheme

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is a variant of Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). Thus, ECDSA is the most suitable in environments where processor power and storage are limited such as smart cards and wireless devices. In this paper, we present ECDSA hardware implementation over Koblitz subfield curves with 163-bit key length recommended by the NIST. To perform it, we need three main operations which are key generation by the use of ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) scalar multiplication, signature generation based on Secure Hash Standard 2(SHA2) and signature verification. All modules are implemented on a Xilinx Virtex 5 ML 50 FPGA platform, they require respectively 9670 slices, 2530 slices, and 18504 slices. FPGA implementations represent generally the first step for obtaining faster ASIC implementations. Further, we implemented our design on an ASIC CMOS 45 nm technology, it requires 0.257 mm² area cell achieving a maximum frequency of 532 MHz and consumes 63.444 (mW).