Abstract
This work presents the hardware demonstrator of a secure encryption
system based on synchronised Chua chaotic circuits. In particular, the
presented encryption system comprises two Chua circuits that are
synchronised using a dedicated bidirectional synchronisation line. One
of them forms part of the transmitter, while the other of the receiver.
Both circuits are tuned to operate in a chaotic mode. The output
(chaotic) signal of the first circuit (transmitter) is digitised and
then combined with the message to be encrypted, through an XOR gate. The
second Chua circuit (receiver) is used for the decryption; the output
chaotic signal of this circuit is similarly digitised and combined with
the encrypted message to retrieve the original message. Our hardware
demonstrator proves that this method can be used in order to provide
extremely lightweight real-world, chaos-based cryptographic solutions.
This work was accepted for and presented as a hardware demo at the 2022
IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust
(HOST 2022), held from 27 to 30 June 2022, in Washington, DC, USA.