FPGA Implementations of the Hummingbird Cryptographic Algorithm

Hummingbird is a new ultra-lightweight cryptographic algorithm targeted for resource-constrained devices like RFID tags, smart cards, and wireless sensor nodes. In this paper, the authors describe efficient hardware implementations of a stand-alone Hummingbird component in Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. They implement an encryption only core and an encryption/decryption core on the low-cost Xilinx FPGA series Spartan-3 and compare their results with other reported lightweight block cipher implementations on the same series. Their experimental results highlight that in the context of low-cost FPGA implementation Hummingbird has favorable efficiency and low area requirements.