Architecture design of the re-configurable 2-D von Neumann cellular automata for image encryption application

The first architecture design of a re-configurable 2D von Neumann cellular automata (CA) is presented in this paper. The CA can be used in the implementation of the 2D CA transform (CAT)/inverse CAT (ICAT) and the 2D CA encryption/decryption. To facilitate its development, we adopted a CA cell structure with programmable additive rules. We have accomplished simulations of a 16×16 CA by using CADENCE tools. Such a CA produces 1 set [256]16×16 CA, or concurrently produces 4 sets (64/set) 8×8 CA and 16 sets (16/set) 4×4 CA, respectively. We also have completed the circuit synthesis of our CA by using the SYNOPSYS tools with the TSMC 0.18 μm cell-library. It shows that the architecture of the proposed re-configurable 2D von Neumann CA has high potential for VLSI realization. Finally, we used the CA to perform CA-based image encryption. The performance of the image encryption shows that the proposed CA works as well as our expectations.