Abstract
Security plays an important role in wireless communication system or network system today. Without security, people won’t safely take many applications on wired or wireless internet. Cryptography is a well solution that provides the security for our requirement and RSA cryptographic algorithm is a well known algorithm whose security is no problem. In this thesis, a high speed word-based modular multiplier is proposed based on our modified word-based Montgomery multiplication algorithm. The major advantage of word-based architecture is providing the scalable key length. In addition to the scalability of key length, it also has better flexibility between area and performance. Since the encryption and decryption of RSA cryptographic algorithm are long interger modular exponentiation, a software implementation is not efficient. It needs a dedicated hardware to help CPU handle the data encryption and decryption. Based on the word-based modular multiplier, we design a RSA crypto-processor. The RSA crypto-processor supports four basic modular operations: modular addition, modular subtraction, modular multiplication and modular exponentiation. A synthesis result reports that the RSA crypto-processor can run at 300MHz and the area of the RSA crypto-processor is about 150k gates. A 512 bit modular exponentiation only spends 1.38 ms.