WAP security: implementation cost and performance evaluation of a scalable architecture for RC5 parameterized block cipher

While the wireless communications are coming to offices and houses, the special needs for secure data transmission, are proved an issue of great importance. The increased number of networks subscribers, in addition to the maximized quantity of the transmitted information, has triggered the revolution of the high speed, in the transmission channel. Security in data transmission is a crucial demand, which has to be faced successfully. It is obvious that the implementation performance of security schemes is also important as the offered security level itself. In this work, the implementation cost and the performance evaluation of RC5 implementations is presented. This cipher is adopted by a great number of wireless protocols, such as WAP. The FPGA implementation synthesis results for a scalable architecture are shown, for a scalable proposed architecture. Alternative adders and subtracters designs are examined for the system architecture, in order high performance and low area resources to be achieved.