The 11 th International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education Bucharest, April 23-24, 2015 10.12753/2066-026X-15-035 RECONFIGURABLE CELLULAR HARDWARE FOR COMMUNICATIONS – AN EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM DRIVEN BY VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION Mihail CHITIC, Octavian Mihai MACHIDON, Florin SANDU “Transilvania” University, Bd. Eroilor 29 A, Braşov, Romania chitic.mihail@gmail.com, octavian.machidon@unitbv.ro, sandu@unitbv.ro Abstract: Recent research has developed service-oriented solutions for reconfigurable hardware, with a top-down functional approach supported by virtual instrumentation systems like “NI LV” - National Instruments LabVIEW. The broad spectrum of Cloud-based management and deployment of such solutions - including resource-intensive “Cloud compilation” in case of using FPGA - have a great potential for ODL (Open and Distance Learning), as being distributed and easily interfaced with our “target user” that can be a trainee not very professional with HDL (Hardware Description Languages). The paper goes beyond consolidated solutions using NI LV like RIO (Reconfigurable Input-Output), aiming to approach also the processing, not at the level of modern SoC (Systems on Chip), but on cellular - “tissue”/“fabric” structures like Cellular Automata. The authors are presenting a demonstrator based on Xilinx Spartan family of FPGA, with prototypes of elementary automata built to be easily put together in scalable configurations. There are discussed use-cases oriented to pattern encryption, based on an educational platform integrated by the authors. Keywords: distance learning; virtual instrumentation; FPGA; Cellular Automata; encryption. I. INTRODUCTION The remote-experiment educational platform presented by this paper was integrated for the study of encryption principles, using cellular automata implemented on FPGA. Classical cryptography algorithms derive their security from the limitations of computation power available at an individual’s disposal [1], [2]. While these methods have proven to supply a high level of security, new ways of encrypting critical messages have to be found, given the rapidly increasing computation power currently available for general use. Cellular automata can be used exclusively to encrypt the desired signals, or they can be used in a hybrid scheme, in which they are used to generate a cipher, which can then be used to encrypt the signal(s) [3]. In order to use the cellular automaton (CA) to directly encrypt the signal, special care needs to be taken to ensure that the automaton is reversible [4]. If the automaton is not reversible, then the signal cannot be decrypted (by simply using the reverse CA). When the signal is encrypted via a reversible cellular automaton, the encryption procedure relies basically on the configuration of the automaton itself [4]. This configuration is defined by the rule vector graph (RVG) associated with the CA. The idea of using reversible cellular automata for encryption purposes was introduced by J. Kari [5]. Other research for using cellular automata in cryptography has been done by P. Anghelescu [6]. In our implementation, there are used reversible cellular automata and hybrid cellular automata (HCA) for cryptography analysis, in an integrated educational platform based on a Digilent Xilinx-Spartan 3E FPGA board, programmed using not HDL but a very convenient virtual instrumentation approach.