CMOS Security-Enhanced Passive (SEP) Tag Supporting to Mutual Authentication

A new cryptographic suite (CS) for mutual authentication is proposed on the basis of the next Electronic Product Code Class-1 Generation-2 (C1G2) standard. The Advanced Encryption Standard cryptographic algorithm with a block size of 128-b is used, and a modified output-feedback mode is applied for generating a key, encrypting data, and decrypting data. As a result, the proposed mutual authentication has fast processing speed. To install this CS into the CMOS passive tag, several low-power design techniques are utilized for the digital processor. The fully integrated CMOS security-enhanced passive (SEP) tag is designed and implemented with the Tower 0.18- μm CMOS process. Regardless of secure level on radio-frequency-identification communications, the CMOS SEP tag intercommunicates with the SEP interrogator emulator under a long identification range. In the measured results, the CMOS SEP tag has sensitivities of -12.0 and - 11.6-dBm in insecure and secure communications, respectively. Moreover, it takes a short time of around 40 ms to mutually authenticate a couple of tag and interrogator. Therefore, it is expected to take roughly 1 s for mutual authentications between 25 tags and 1 interrogator.