CAREER: Utilizing Principles of Energy Recovery Computing for Low-Energy and DPA-Resistant IoT Devices

This project will develop circuit design techniques for energy-recovery circuits and a library of such design cells to facilitate low-power implementation of block cipher for mobile Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, where reducing power consumption is critical. The design challenge is to produce low-energy, lightweight, and secure devices, which are also resistant against malicious attacks that use power consumption traces to extract private or sensitive information. This project will provide a set of energy recovery (ER) principles for low-energy and differential power analysis (DPA)-resistant IoT devices. The research objectives are: (i) to investigate information leakage in ER circuits and propose mitigation methodologies; (ii) to investigate and develop a low-energy and DPA-resistant ER standard cell library and semi-custom design flow for lightweight cryptographic circuits; and (iii) to investigate and develop power clock generation and distribution, and silicon prototyping to evaluate energy dissipation and the DPA-resistance of ER-based crypto circuits. Outcomes and results from this project should make a strong case for industry adoption of ER computing for the design of low-energy and secure IoT devices. Another integral goal of this project is to broaden graduate, undergraduate, and minority and underrepresented participation in cyber and hardware security research and education. The project will develop new courses in hardware security for undergraduate and graduate students, and conduct workshops. Internships on hardware security will be offered to Appalachian high-school students and historically underrepresented minorities, and first-generation students. The project repository will be stored electronically and made available through the website hosted by University of Kentucky, College of Engineering (http://hthapliyal.engineering.uky.edu/). The data will be retained for at least three years beyond the duration of the award. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.