Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2
VLSI IMPLEMENTATION OF SMS4 CIPHER
FOR OPTIMIZED UTILIZATION OF FPGA
G.Sai Manoj
Department of ECE
Vaagdevi College of Engineering
Warangal, India
manojgadapa@gmail.com
G.Thirumal
Department of ECE
Vaagdevi College of Engineering
Warangal, India
thirumalreddy1503@gmail.com
Abstract—SMS4 is a symmetric encryption algorithm, specif-
ically a block cipher, designed for data encryption which is
used in WAPI(Wide authentication and privacy infrastructure).
In this paper we evaluate SMS4 encryption algorithm based
on S box circuit architecture . The SMS4 block cipher has
been implemented in Xilinx Vivado on FPGA Virtex -ultra scale
Family. Achieved area is compared with other devices in virtex
ultra scale family and Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i is chosen for its
best performance. The simulation results revealed optimization
in area.
Index Terms—S box, SMS4 Cipher ,VLSI design, Target device
FPGA,SMS4 Encryption ,VIRTEX
I. I NTRODUCTION
Network Security is vital component in information security
because it is responsible for securing all information passed
through networked computers. It covers large variety of com-
puter networks, in public and private sectors, that are used
in everyday jobs conducting transactions and communications
among businesses, government agencies and individuals. Net-
work security is involved in organizations and enterprises.
Private Networks, are within a company, and others which
might be open to public access. In order to achieve fullest
potential of a business and protection from risks and threats
we need network security. The following factors are considered
for developing a secured network.
A. Confidentiality
The authorized individuals or parties must access and read
the data. Confidentiality can be compared with privacy. Con-
fidentiality can be protected using few methods such as data
encryption, passwords, biometric verification ,user identities .
This provides protection for personal information.
B. Maintain of Integrity
The main concept of integrity is assurance or guarantee of
data received by the receiver without any modification after
post transmission.To ensure integrity measures to be taken are
978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
B.Sravanthi
Department of ECE
Vaagdevi College of Engineering
Warangal, India
sravanthibsy1997@gmail.com
Sudheer Raja Venishetty
Department of ECE
Vaagdevi College of Engineering
Warangal, India
sudheerrajav@yahoo.com
controlling the physical environment of networked terminals
and servers, restricting access to data, and maintaining rigor-
ous authentication practices. Another method to ensure data
integrity is hashing the data received and comparing it with
the hash of original message. Cryptography plays a key role
in ensuring the data integrity.
C. To Ensure Availability
The main concept of availability is data has to be available
for authorized persons at the right time. It can be ensured by
maintaining all hardware, making hardware repairs immedi-
ately and maintaining a perfect functioning operating system
environment. Regular backup must be taken, for information
services that are highly critical .Another appropriate method
to ensure availability is redundancy .
D. Access Control
It is the process of preventing an unauthorized use of
resources. If one can access, under which restrictions and con-
ditions the access can be occurred, and what is the permission
level of a given access. [1]
Cryptography Network Security is a concept to protect data
transmission over wireless network. Over unreliable network
data Security is the main aspect. Cryptography has its origin
in the ancient world.Cryptography is an emerging technology,
which is essential for network security.It plays vital role in
todays communications and computer networks, protecting ev-
erything from important bank transactions to e-mail and inter-
net shopping.While classical and modern cryptography employ
various mathematical techniques to avoid eavesdroppers from
learning the contents of encrypted messages.Few computer
systems and networks store data, and transfer valuable in-
formation which require protection against such unauthorised
access. Suitable communication protocols and cryptography
provide a high degree of protection in communications against
intruder attacks [2]
1225
 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2
Fig. 1. Symmetric Encryption
Cryptography is the art of concealing information from
eavesdroppers by means of a secret,that is only known to
the communicating parties.In cryptography original text or
unencrypted data is called as ’plaintext’ it is turned into
a coded equivalent called as ’ciphertext’ using encryption
algorithm.The plain text can be obtained by decrypting the
ciphertext at receving end. Cipher is the algorithm used to
transform orginal text or plaintext to cipher text, in other
words, it’s a mechanism of converting understandable data into
”meaningless” data.[3]
E. Encryption
The process of encoding a message or information in such
a way that only authorized parties can access it and those
who are not authorized cannot is known as encryption. The
encrypted message is an apparently random stream of data.In
an encryption scheme, the intended information or message,
referred to as plaintext, is encrypted using an encryption
algorithm a cipher generating ciphertext that can be read
only if decrypted.
F. Decryption
The reverse operation of encryption is known as decryption.
In this process, the receiver end should know both the key
that was selected by sender during encryption and encrypted
message for decryption. The decryption process needs the
correct key and it is impossible without using correct key
very.[4] Most of the successful algorithms perform encryption
and decryption using a key The key-based cryptographic
algorithms can be classified into two , they are symmetric-
key cryptography and asymmetric cryptography or publickey
cryptography [5].
G. Symmetric Cryptography
Symmetric-key cryptography refers to encryption methods
in which both the sender and receiver share the same key.
Symmetric key cryptography is also known as private-key
cryptography [6].Simplified process of syymmetric encrytpion
is shown in Figure 1.
Various symmetric cryptography schemes are. i) DES(Data
Encryption Standard) ii) AES(Advanced Encryption Standard)
1) Data Encryption Standard (DES): i)Data Encryption
Standard (DES) introduced in early 1970 at IBM. The design
and structure of DES is based on Horst Feistel structure. DES
is used for encryption and decryption of message [7]. The key
size used in DES is 56-bit.Same secret key is used for both
978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Fig. 2. Asymmetric Encryption
encryption and decryption in DES.The block size of DES for
encryption is of 64-bit [8]. The DES algorithm is widely used
in military, commercial, and security of communication system
applications[9][10].
2) Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): The advance-
ment of 3DES algorithm is AES [11]. It was introduced in
1997 by the National Institute of Standards and Technol-
ogy(NIST). AES is based on the Rijndael cipher developed by
two cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. AES
differ from DES and 3DES due to variables key sizes such as
128, 192, and 256 bits. AES performs encryption on message
blocks of size 128-bit. AES algorithm is used in small devices
for encrypting a message and also in monetary transaction and
security applications [12].
H. Asymmetric Cryptography
The public-key cryptography or Asymmetric cryptography
is in which a pair of keys is used to encrypt and decrypt a
message it arrives securely .The public key is openly accessible
to everyone in the cryptosystem and the secret key is kept
secret by authorized person. [13]. Figure 2 Illustrates the
simplified process of Asymmetric Cryptography
Different types of asymmetric cryptography algorithms are.
i)RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) ii)ElGamal iii)ECC
1) RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman): Rivest, Shamir
and Adleman introduced the RSA algorithm in 1977 [14].
RSA is part of asymmetric cryptographic algorithm [15]
used for encryption and decryption of the message. Over
an insecure channel RSA is widely used in transferring of
keys.RSA provides authenticity , integrity, confidentiality, and
nonrepudiation of data [16 ]. RSA is employed in online
money transfer applications[17].
2) ElGamal: ElGamal algorithm was introduced by Taher
ElGamal in 1985 [18]. It is an asymmetric key encryption
algorithm which is based on the Diffie-Helman key exchange
an alternative to RSA for public key encryption. ElGamal is
most commonly used in digital signature generation algorithm
called ElGamal signature scheme [19].
3) ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography): ECC is known as
Elliptic Curve Cryptography. It is introduced in 1985 by Neal
Koblitz and Victor S. Miller. ECC belongs to the category
of asymmetric scheme based on elliptic curves. ECC is most
widely used in encryption, digital signatures and pseudo-
random generators [20].
Block ciphers are fundamental building block of modern
cryptography.Here we are using SMS4 block cipher which
is symmetric encryption algorithm designed for data
1226
 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2

encryption.SMS4 block cipher was invented by professor

LU Shu-wang ,first published in 2003 then published
independently by OSCCA(Organization of State Commercial
Administration of China). Finally it is standardized in 2016 as
a Chinese National Standard.It is used for protecting wireless
networks , and is mandatory to use in the Chinese National
Standard for Wireless LAN WAPI (Wired Authentication
and Privacy Infrastructure) standard in order to provide data
confidentiality. SMS4 block cipher need128 bit data and 128
bit key.It uses 8 bit s-box(substitution box). Encryption or
decryption of one block of data is composed of 32 rounds.It
uses non linear key schedule to produce round keys.It is
competetor of AES. Operations used in Sms4 are XOR,
32-bit circular shifts and S-Box applications.The Chinese
WLAN industry widely uses WAPI, and it is supported by
many international organizations like SONY in the relevant
products. SMS4 has prevalent hardware implementations like
Fig. 3. SMS4 Encryption process
(SM4-FPGA) and(SM4-VLSI). [21][22][23].

The rest of this paper is organized as follows.Introduction C. Transformations included

to SMS4 block cipher is described in section II.In section III
Transformation (T) is a reversible substitution function that
expansion of SMS4 algorithm is explained in detail Section
outputs 32 bits from an input of 32 bits.It consists of a non-
IV gives the details about tools used for implementation of
linear transform () and linear transformation, L.
algorithm and presents the Simulation and Synthesis results
of sms4 cipher. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section 1) Non linear transformation () : τ is composed of four
V. parallel S-boxes.

II. SMS4 BLOCK CIPHER
SMS4 block cipher is a 32 round iterative algorithm, and in
each round one word is modified by adding it to other three
words with a keyed function. The input data,output data and
key size is of 128 bits each. It accepts two 128 bit data input
i.e input data and input key .The input given to the data is
divided into four 32 bit words in which total makes 128 bit
data . The internal iterations in SMS4 operate on former states
to generate new states .The output obtained is 128 bit cipher
data after completion of 32 round encryption.General SMS4
encryption process using Feistel structure is shown in figure
3.
A. S BOX (substitution box)
The S BOX (substitutionbox) function produces 8-bit output
from 8-bit input, represented as Sbox(.)
The official depiction of SMS4 S-box is given as a lookup
table (LUT) with 16×16 entries where total 256 entries. The
S-box is commonly implemented with the ROM lookup table
where the pre-computed values are stored.Fig 4 depicts the
look up table for S BOX.
B. Operations included
LThe major operations used in this SMS4 algorithm are:
, Bitwise exclusive-OR operation of two 32-bit vectors.
<<< n, Left cyclic shift by n bits.
For a 32-bit input of A, where each ai is a 8-bit string:
A = (a0 , a1 , a2 , a3 )
The output is a 32-bit B, where eachbi is a 8-bit string:
B = (b0 , b1 , b2 , b3 )
B can be calculated as follows:(b0 , b1 , b2 , b3 ) = τ (A)
τ (A) = (Sbox(a0 ), Sbox(a1 ), Sbox(a2 ), Sbox(a3 ))
For example:
The input F0 will produce an output which is read from
the S-box table row 9 and column A, results in Sbox(F0) = 18
2) Linear Substitution L: Whereas output obtained in
non-linear transformation function τ is used as input to linear
transformation function L. Given B, a 32-bit input
L produces a 32-bit output C
C = L(B)
L(B) = B xor(Bhhh2)xor(B hh10)xor(B hhh18)xor(B hhh24)
III. E XPANSION OF SMS4 A LGORITHM
SMS4 algorithm is a block cipher with 128-bit block
size.It includes input data , input key(MK), data out(cipher
data)which are of 128 -bit block size and roundkey rki of
32 bit block size. The data output 128-bit cipher is obtained
after 32round encryption.Each encryption round needs a round
key rki ,which is generated with original inputkey(MK) using
Algorithm I.

978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1227

 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2

Fig. 4. SMS4 S-box Look up table

L L
A. Algorithm I Step5: L‘(B) = B (B <<< 13) (B <<< 23)Linear
transformation
Key Input: M K = (M K0 , M K1 , M K2 , M K3 )
L
Step6: ki L‘(B) gives rki (round key)which is 32 bit data
Here MK is key supplied by user. Flowchart for algorithm I
is depicted in Figure 5. Output : rki (round key)
Step1: L
(K0 , K1 , K2 , KL
L 3 ) = (M K0 F K0 , M K1
L
F K1 , M K2 F K2 , M K3 F K3 ) B. Algorithm II
Here FK is 32-bit system parameters defined in hexadecimal
F K0 = (A3B1BAC6) F K1 = (56AA3350) F K2 = Input: X = (X0 , X1 , X2 , X3 ) 128 bits.X is user supplied
(677D9197)3 = (B27022DC) data i.e plain text. Figure 6. illustrates the flow chart for
Algorithm II.
Step2: L L L L
L L L L Xi+4 = Xi T (Xi+1 Xi+2 Xi+3 rki )where
rki = ki+4 = ki T ki+1 Ki+2 Ki+3 CKi )where
i=(0,1,2,3..31)
i=(0,1,2,3,31)
*The value of rki (round key) is obtained in Algorithm I
Step3:
CKi,j = (4 ∗ i + j) ∗ 7(mod256) where i=(0,1,2,3..31) and Let L A L be L data obtained from
j=(0,1,2,3) (Xi+1 Xi+2 Xi+3 rki ) 32 bits data
L L L
Let T(ki+1 ki+2 ki+3 Cki ) be A-key Input: A= (a0 , a1 , a2 , a3 )

Input: AKEY = (a0 , a1 , a2 , a3 ) which is of 32 bit data Step7: B = (b0 , b1 , b2 , b3 ) =

(Sbox(a0 ), Sbox(a1 ), Sbox(a2 ), Sbox(a3 ) 32 bit data(non
Step4: BKEY = (b0 , b1 , b2 , b3 ) = linear transformation)
(Sbox(a0 ), Sbox(a1 ), Sbox(a2 ), Sbox(a3 )) L L
Non linear transformation Step8:
L L(B) = LB (B <<< 2) (B <<<
10) (B <<< 18) (B <<< 24) 32 bit data(linear

978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1228

 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2

Fig. 7. Encryption results of sms4 cipher

Fig. 5. Flow chart for Algorithm I

Fig. 8. Obtained encrypted output data from sms4 cipher encryption

Fig. 6. Flow chart for Algorithm II

simulated employing Verilog using vivado design suite as
workstation.Synthesised using Virtex-ultra scale family de-
vices.Figure 11 and Figure 12. illustrates the RTL View
transformation) and Technology Schematic when implemented over selected
FPGA.
L
Step9: Xi L(B) gives Xi+4 which is 32 bit data

Output: Y = (Y0 , Y1 , Y2 , Y3 ) = ((X35 , X34 , X33 , X32 )) for

i=0 to 31.Y is Cipher text obtained after 32 rounds.

*Decryption can be easily implemented using exactly the

same algorithm with encryption,but the reverse order of round
keys.

IV. SIMULATION AND SYNTHESIS

In this section we presented the simulation and synthesis
results when these are implemented on FPGA Virtex -ultra
scale Family Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i device. Figure 7. and
Figure8.depicts the encryption results while Figure 9.,Figure
10. shows decryption results . The SMS4 cipher have been Fig. 9. Decryption results of sms4 cipher

978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1229

 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2

Fig. 10. Obtained decrypted output data from sms4 cipher decryption
Fig. 13. overview of sms4 cipher on target device (FPGA Virtex-Ultra scale
Family - Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i)

Fig. 14. Utilization graph on a target device (FPGA Virtex -ultra scale Family
Fig. 11. RTL view of SMS4 Cipher xcvu440-flga2892-1-c)

A. Performance Analysis
Table I indicates the FPGA resource utilization and also
presents the performance analysis when implemented on
FPGA device. The choosen FPGA device utilizes less percent
of LUTs,Flip flops ,IO,BUFG which boost up the operation
of the device.

B. Comparision
The Table I shows the comparision of area on various FPGA
devices of Virtex Ultra Scale family .It is found that FPGA
Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i uses less area as compared with other
devices.

Fig. 12. Technology schematic of sms4 cipher
V. CONCLUSION
Utilization of area plays a vital role in design of an
electronic circuit.The results presented in this work shows
the optimization of the above factor.When SMS4 cipher is
implemented on Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i device .Which can
provide high operation speed due to presence of 2520 BRAMs

TABLE I
FPGA R ESOURCE U TILIZATION TABLE II
VARIOUS FPGA R ESOURCE U TILIZATION C OMPARISION
Resource Utilization Available Utilization%
LUT’s 641 716160 0.09 Device LUT’S FF IO BUFG
FF 265 1432320 0.02 Xcvu125-flvb2104-1-i 0.09 0.02 74.36 0.08
IOB 522 702 74.36 Xcvu440-flga2892-1-c 0.03 0.01 35.85 0.07
BUFG 1 1200 0.08 Xcvu125-flva2104-1H-e 0.09 0.02 62.74 0.08
Xcvu440-flgb2377-1-c 0.03 0.01 40.15 0.07

978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1230

 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (ICICCT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number: CFP18BAC-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-1974-2

and it use less power and area which can enhance the operation
of the device.
R EFERENCES
[1] IJARCCE Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2016 Harish Singh Network Security, A
Challenge Department of Computer Applications DOI 10.17148/IJAR-
CCE.2016.5317
[2] IJCSMC, Vol. 4, Issue. 1, January 2015, pg.201 204 Network Security
with Cryptography Prof. Mukund R. Joshi, Renuka Avinash Karkade
[3] Sarita Kumari A research Paper on Cryptography Encryption and
Compression Techniques Volume 6 Issue 4 April 2017, Page
No. 20915-20919 Index Copernicus value (2015): 58.10 DOI:
10.18535/ijecs/v6i4.20
[4] Rahman MM*, Akter T and Rahman A Development of Cryptography-
Based Secure Messaging System DOI: 10.4172/2167-0919.1000142
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jatiya Kabi Kazi
Nazrul Islam University, Bangladesh
[5] Diffie W, Hellma M (1976) New Directions in Cryptography. IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory 22.
[6] Ayushi A Symmetric Key Cryptographic Algorithm 2010 International
Journal of Computer Applications (0975 - 8887) Volume 1 No. 15
[7] D. Sukhija, Performance Evaluation of Cryptographic Algorithms: AES
and DES, vol. 3, no. 9, pp. 582585, 2014.
[8] S. S. and K. Annapoorna Shetty, A Review on Asymmetric Cryptogra-
phy RSA and ElGamal Algorithm, Int. J. Innov. Res. Comput. Commun.
Eng., vol. 2, no. Special issue 5, p. 98, 2014.
[9] R. Tripathi and S. Agrawal, Comparative Study of Symmetric and Asym-
metric Cryptography Techniques, Int. J. Adv. Found. Res. Comput., vol.
1, no. 6, pp. 6876, 2014.
[10] E. Barker, A. Roginsky, G. Locke, and P. Gallagher, Transitions:
Recommendation for Transitioning the Use of Cryptographic Algorithms
and Key Lengths, NIST Spec. Publ., no. January, pp. 800 131, 2011.
[11] H. O. Alanazi, B. B. Zaidan, a. a. Zaidan, H. a. Jalab, M. Shabbir, and
Y. Al-Nabhani, New Comparative Study Between DES, 3DES and AES
within Nine Factors, J. Comput., vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 21519617, 2010.
[12] A. Sterbenz and P. Lipp, Performance of the AES Candidate Algorithms
in Java, Third Advanced Encryption Stand. Candidate Conf. April 13–
14, 2000, New York, NY, USA, pp. 161168, 2000.
[13] David Pointcheval Asymmetric Cryptography and Practical Security
Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology. Vol-
ume4/2002.Pages 4156
[14] R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman A Method for Obtaining
Digital Signatures and Public- Key Cryptosystems. Communications of
the ACM, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 9699, 1983.
[15] A. Al Hasib and A. A. M. M. Haque, A comparative study of the
performance and security issues of AES and RSA cryptography, Proc.
- 3rd Int. Conf. Converg. Hybrid Inf. Technol. ICCIT 2008, vol. 2, no.
November 2001, pp. 505510, 2008.
[16] M. E. Student, Algorithms for Secure Cloud, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 19, 2014.
[17] G. Bernab and N. Clarke Study of RSA Performance in Java Cards,
2013 .
[18] P. Nalwaya, V. P. Saxena, and P. Nalwaya, A cryptographic approach
based on integrating running key in feedback mode of elgamal system,
Proc. - 2014 6th Int. Conf. Comput. Intell. Commun. Networks, CICN
2014, pp. 719724, 2014.
[19] X. Li, X. Shen, and H. Chen, ElGamal digital signature algorithm of
adding a random number, J. Networks, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 774782, 2011.
[20] M. S. Anoop, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Infosecwriters, pp. 111,
2015.
[21] Xuefei Bai Li Guo Lu Huang Yanhua Xu A Fast VLSI Design of SMS4
Cipher Based on Twisted BDD S-box Architecture Publisher: IEEE DOI:
10.1109/NSWCTC.2009.114 05 May 2009
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM4a lgorithm
[23] Whitfield Diffie, George Ledin SMS4 Encryption Algorithm for Wireless
Networks Published 2008 in IACR Cryptology.

978-1-5386-1974-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 1231