A configurable AES processor for enhanced security

We propose a configurable AES processor for extended-security communication. The proposed architecture can provide up to 2¹⁹ different AES block cipher schemes within a reasonable hardware cost. Data can be encrypted not only with secret keys and initial vectors, but also by different block ciphers during the communication. A novel on-the-fly key expansion design is also proposed for 28-, 192-, and 256-bit keys. Our unified hardware can run both the original AES algorithm and the extended AES algorithm. The proposed processor design has been fabricated by a 0.25μm CMOS process, with a silicon area of 6.93mm² - about 200.5K equivalent gates. Under a 66MHz clock, the throughput rate for both the ECB and CBC operation modes are 844.8Mbps, 704Mbps, and 603.4Mbps for 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit keys, respectively.