The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the ability to address secure communications with virtually no overhead at reasonable cost. The asynchronous engine developed in this program will enable robust encryption and decryption while offering improvements in power efficiency, data throughput and security. According to SDM, the market for encryption and decryption technology could be as high as $38.5 billion by 2020. Additionally, there is a recognized need for encryption and authentication of power and chemical/process plants in the U.S., currently dangerously underserved. The initial market is estimated to be $270M and the serviceable addressable market is $2.7B. This program's primary focus will be on the asynchronous engine for the industrial and data center industries with a total market of $27B. In addition, the proposed technology will be flexible enough to be incorporated into encryption-decryption products in many other industries. These include consumer goods and services, such as mobile communications devices, entertainment and transportation (vehicles, airplanes). This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will address the need for cyber security for Internet-of-Things (loT) systems using an innovative approach: an asynchronous engine using chaotic functions to generate an infinite length key for encryption and decryption. During the past few decades, information has emerged as the most valuable asset for both individuals and corporations. Cyber-attacks no longer exclusively target military or large enterprises; everyone from private citizens to businesses to governments requires secure communications. The methods of encryption rely on digital schemes to encrypt and decrypt messages using general-purpose CPUs and software; which means that loT devices impend hacking of information, system function, corporate profits, and national security. Our unique approach will include a discrete-logic program with reconfigurable chaotic oscillators loaded into a field programmable gate array (FPGA). This hybrid system will be tested with different loT devices and network configurations. The long-term goal of the hybrid encryption-decryption engine is to build a hardware encryption device to secure peer-to-peer communication. The innovative solution will allow the attached device to execute much faster than current solutions of similar complexity while reducing or eliminating overhead, and allowing one-time pad encryption.
