Multi-Base Chains for Faster Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Abstract

This research addresses a multi-base number system (MBNS) for faster elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). The emphasis is on speeding up the main operation of ECC: scalar multiplication (tP). Mainly, it addresses the two issues of using the MBNS with ECC: deriving optimized formulas and choosing fast methods. To address the first issue, this research studies the optimized formulas (e.g., 3P, 5P) in different elliptic curve coordinate systems over prime and binary fields. For elliptic curves over prime fields, affine Weierstrass, Jacobian Weierstrass, and standard twisted Edwards coordinate systems are reviewed. For binary elliptic curves, affine, Lambda-projective, and twisted mu4-normal coordinate systems are reviewed. Additionally, whenever possible, this research derives several optimized formulas for these coordinate systems. To address the second issue, this research theoretically and experimentally studies the MBNS methods with respect to the average chain length, the average chain cost, and the average conversion cost. The reviewed MBNS methods are greedy, ternary/binary, multi-base NAF, tree-based, and rDAG-based. The emphasis is on these methods' techniques to convert integer t to multi-base chains. Additionally, this research develops bucket methods that advance the MBNS methods. The experimental results show that the MBNS methods with the optimized formulas, in general, have good improvements on the performance of scalar multiplication, compared to the single-base number system methods.