Embedded 8-bit AES in wireless Bluetooth application

Abstract

This paper presents an 8-bit AES direct FPGA hardware implementation of CFB/OFB operations without using the Block RAM (BRAM). The 8-bit AES core is then embedded through a microcontroller to interface with Bluetooth wireless for performing encryption or decryption. Two sets of the embedded systems are configured together to experiment the AES operation of the image encryption and decryption through wireless communication achieved the baud rate of 0.23 Megabits per second (Mbps). CFB/OFB operations have two advantages over ECB operation; one is the low area circuit design, and the other is the complete hiding of input patterns in plain image with identical colors. Though CFB/OFB implementation without BRAM has a little larger slice area then the implementation with RAM, yet the non-BRAM in ASIC implementation achieved only 2.2K gates, synthesized using 0.18μm technology, which is the smallest gate count for the 8-bit ASIC implementation ever proposed.