A Hardware Accelerator for the IEEE 802.1X-2010 Key Hierarchy in Automotive Applications

In recent years, the complexity of automotive networks has increased, leading to broad security issues related to human safety. Furthermore, car-to-car communication and the interaction between cars and the external environment seem to be the next step of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. To solve problems of network overload, the automotive world is increasingly moving in the direction of using an Ethernet backbone for in-vehicle communications. Therefore, the security of Ethernet protocols has become a significant concern. The IEEE 802.1AE MAC Security standard could be a suitable solution for this purpose. It maintains the confidentiality and integrity of data, but leaves the problem of authentication and key management unresolved. The IEEE 802.1X-2010 standard solves this issue, including solutions that allow the secure usage of the IEEE 802.1AE MAC Security standard. In this work, an efficient hardware accelerator for IEEE 802.1X-2010 is presented. The system was synthesized both on a Stratix V FPGA and on a 40nm standard-cell library. The former gives a usage of 3% of the Adaptive Logic Modules (ALMs) while the latter shows an occupation of 55 kgates. On the FPGA, the maximum throughput is 152 Mbps and 1.14 Gbps for the two sections of the algorithm, respectively, while the standard-cell technology provides a maximum throughput of 457 Mbps and 3.85 Gbps. This solution suggests an interesting implementation when fast, lowarea, and secure key-management solutions for Ethernet networks are required.