| Cryptography is the science of secret writing. Modern encryption is achieved with algorithms that use a key to encrypt and decrypt messages. Recently, the National Institute Of Standards and Technology (NIST) has adopted Advanced Encryption Standard, which replaces the aging Data Encryption Standard. Rijndael is such an encryption algorithm that is used by U.S. government organizations to protect sensitive information. The performance of Rijndael is consistently high in both hardware and software.; This thesis focuses on the hardware implementation of the Rijndael Encryption Algorithm. The Xilinx Project Navigator tool is used for this hardware implementation. The round datapath in Rijndael consists of four operations: Byte substitution, Shift row, Mixcolumn and Addroundkey. Each operation is designed using VHDL code, which is a hardware description language. The code is synthesized and then simulated. VHDL testbench code is used to verify the design. Modelsim II from Mentor Graphics is a simulation tool that is used to generate a waveform so that the output can be observed. Finally, all the tested individual components are combined to obtain a complete design of Rijndael Encryption Algorithm. |
