A Reconfigurable Secure Networking Platform
Rami Amiri, Omar Sayed Ahmed Elkeelany · 2014
In the Smart Grid, a reliable communication platform is needed for conveying huge amount of data among S mart Grid's communication subsystems. Thus, the design of the reliable communication platform is of key importance for data availability and better decisions. In this article, the major challenges to Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are identified, and addressed. The TCP/IP protocol stack is implemented as software, and as hardware on an FPGA. In the hardware implementation, a MAC layer from Altera defined as Triple-speed Ethernet (TS E) is configured and synthesized. We verified the designs via transmitting TCP/IP packets to both a Logic Analyzer and a Network Protocol Analyzer. Finally, we integrated Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) with both hardware and software implementation on an FPGA. We discuss the importance of ECC, its advantages and disadvantages, and the challenge of mapping a message into a point on the curve and the architecture of our crypto embedded system.