Fast elliptic curve cryptographic processor architecture based on three parallel GF(2k) bit level pipelined digit serial multipliers

Unusual processor architecture for elliptic curve encryption is proposed in this paper. The architecture exploits projective coordinates (x=X/Z, y=Y/Z) to convert GF(2^k) division needed in elliptic point operations into several multiplication steps. The processor has three GF(2^k) multipliers implemented using bit-level pipelined digit serial computation. It is shown that this results in a faster operation than using fully parallel multipliers with the added advantage of requiring less area. The proposed architecture is a serious contender for implementing data security systems based on elliptic curve cryptography.