Hardware/software co-design of a lightweight crypto algorithm BORON on an FPGA

New areas such as Internet of Things (IoT), smart home technologies and wearable technologies have brought security problems together. In order for these technologies to be implemented in the future, attention should be paid to the confidentiality of the produced data. The best way to achieve this is to use cryptography. This article is about hardware implementation of BORON, which is an energy efficient crypto algorithm with small footprint, on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) using hardware description language. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol for secret key sharing is implemented using the Montgomery Modular Multiplier written in VHDL language. After testing that the hardware is fully functional, the software is designed with the C language on the ARM processor to control the entire system. Finally, the output of the hardware and software-designed Boron code on FPGA is printed on the screen via serial communication protocol (UART).