Analysis of simple current sources and sinks for differential current mode technology
Krzysztof Gołofit · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2007
The paper introduces the Differential Current Mode Technology (DCMT) - a technique of providing very high security level for cryptographic devices. As distinct from the most Side Channel Attacks (SCA) preventing methods, the DCMT does not rely on concealing, masking or muffling, but minimizes the sources of the leakage. Digital circuits based on DCMT operate with constant and continuous supply current as well as symmetrical differential current-mode inner connections - all with the aim of keeping electromagnetic emanation and power supply disturbances as low as possible. The paper describes the general assumptions for the DCMT, basic model of the DCM-gate, three-valued DCM-logic, rules of differential current arithmetic and basics of binary computations on the basis of the DCMT. A crucial issue for the DCMT in the fields of security, efficiency, power consumption and implementation cost (size on an IC) is designing of current sources and sinks. Trade-off between supply current and propagation time, along with analyses of static and dynamic currents aberrations with regard to sizes of current sinks/sources are presented.