Secure remote updating of bitstream in partial reconfigurable embedded systems based on FPGA

Intellectual Property protection on FPGAs is a major challenge for FPGA manufacturers. Adding security features to the FPGA is not difficult but there is no consistency among the different manufacturers. Meanwhile, more features will increase resource costs and product prices, forcing users to pay for all these features even if they do not use them. As a result, decoders are often not integrated inside low-cost FPGAs. To protect an FPGA-based system of this kind, we must build separate security solutions. This paper presents the importance of bit stream security, including a number of attack scenarios and FPGA bitstream security methods. We introduced bitstream encryption and authentication solutions in partial reconfigurable embedded systems based on the MicroBlaze soft-core processor aimed at improving the flexibility of the system. The highlight of our solution is that it can be applied to systems that use embedded processor. This is most practical when using shared resources (soft-core processors, memory…) for different target applications.