FinSAL: FinFET-Based Secure Adiabatic Logic for Energy-Efficient and DPA Resistant IoT Devices

Abstract

With the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT), there is an urgent need to design energy-efficient and secure IoT devices. For example, IoT devices such as radio frequency identification tags and wireless sensor nodes employ AES cryptographic module that are susceptible to differential power analysis (DPA) attacks. With the scaling of technology, leakage power in the cryptographic device increases, which increases their vulnerability to DPA attack. This paper presents a novel FinFET-based secure adiabatic logic (FinSAL), that is energy-efficient and DPA-immune. The proposed adiabatic FinSAL is used to design logic gates such as buffers, XOR, and NAND. Further, the logic gates based on adiabatic FinSAL are used to implement a positive polarity Reed Muller architecture-based S-box circuit. SPICE simulations at 12.5 MHz show that adiabatic FinSAL (20-nm FinFET technology) S-box circuit saves up to 81% of energy per cycle as compared to the conventional S-box circuit implemented using FinFET (20-nm FinFET technology). Further, the security of adiabatic FinSAL S-box circuit has been evaluated by performing the DPA attack through SPICE simulations. We proved that the FinSAL S-box circuit is resistant to a DPA attack through a developed DPA attack flow applicable to SPICE simulations. Further, the impact of FinSAL on hardware security at different technology nodes of FinFETs (7, 10, 14, and 16 nm) are evaluated. From the simulation results, FinSAL gates at 14-nm FinFET offer superior security with optimum power consumption, therefore is the best candidate to design low-power secure IoT devices.