On the hardware design and implementation of a chaos-based RFID authentication and watermarking scheme

In this paper, we identify key factors that are specific to a successful hardware implementation which uses chaos in RFID communications under the ISO14443A standard, and highlight some of the challenges that have to be overcome for such an implementation. We propose a brand new RFID authentication scheme based on Lorenz chaotic system and a watermarking scheme utilizing the continuously changing and random Lorenz chaotic states to conceal plaintext transmissions between the reader and the tag. This novel way of combining the resources used for authentication and obfuscation of plaintext data significantly reduces the complexity and memory requirements of modern tags, in addition to securing not just the authentication phase of an RFID communication session, but all communication between a reader and a tag. We also provide the details of our proposed authentication and watermarking scheme in hardware while providing supporting justifications for the correctness of our implementation.