TABLE OF CONTENTS Having defined the functionality and explained the need as well as the merits of end-to-end security in communications and more specifically relative to the wireless arena, this chapter elaborates on solutions in hardware versus software and discusses the two fundamental hardware categories, namely, configurable and non-configurable circuitry. Avenues of rapid implementations for highly integrated security solutions are investigated and various technologies are considered as enabling platforms, such as digital signal processors(s) (DSPs) and system-on-a-chip (SOC) with or without embedded DSP functionality.
Various aspects of security have been discussed, with the conclusion that interception is a real danger. The potential eavesdropper is the number one enemy. He or she can be casual or deliberate, well organized and financially-backed or not, highly trained and equipped or not, perhaps sponsored by a hostile government. Or the unwelcome listener may be a grade-school student who has just discovered the conversation by chance. Whatever the source of broken privacy, the need to protect the confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and potentially the non-repudiation of a communications session and its content is obvious. Ancillary aspects of wireless security, such as denial of service, assumes the form of signal level or application level jamming covered in the previous chapter and will not be addressed here.
As the designer of a wireless communications device (handset, PDA, and so forth) is confronted with several fundamental variables and parameters, his work should be examined in situ before defining an optimization. A circuit, for instance, can be...
