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Volume 13 | Issue 4 | Year 2026 | Article Id. IJECE-V13I4P125 | DOI : https://doi.org/10.14445/23488549/IJECE-V13I4P125

High Throughput Lightweight SPECK Block Cipher Implementation on FPGA Platform for IoT Devices

Satish Kumar B, Panduranga Rao Malode V, G. Ezhilarasan

Received Revised Accepted Published
21 Jan 2026 21 Feb 2026 23 Mar 2026 30 Apr 2026

Citation :

Satish Kumar B, Panduranga Rao Malode V, G. Ezhilarasan, "High Throughput Lightweight SPECK Block Cipher Implementation on FPGA Platform for IoT Devices," International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 297-306, 2026. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/23488549/IJECE-V13I4P125

Abstract

IoT devices with limited resources, in which area, power, and throughput must be meticulously balanced, are crucially protected by lightweight cryptography. In this study, a high-throughput FPGA implementation of the lightweight SPECK block cipher that is tailored for Internet of Things applications is presented. On an Artix-7 FPGA platform, the architecture is synthesized using Xilinx ISE Design Suite 14.7 and specified in Verilog-HDL. The SPECK-32/64, SPECK-64/128, SPECK-128/128, and SPECK-128/256 configurations are used to test scalability at different security levels. The suggested design makes use of an ARX-based datapath that has been optimized and employs effective round-key scheduling to get a high operating frequency with minimal hardware overhead. Results from experiments show that throughput can reach 1.064 Gbps and an ultimate frequency of 404.269 MHz, all while using little power (<110 mW). With a hardware efficiency of up to 3.563 Mbps/Slice, the architecture greatly outperforms current SPECK and other lightweight encryption implementations. The findings verify that the suggested architecture offers an efficient trade-off between performance, area usage, and security strength, making it ideal for FPGA cryptographic accelerators with an IoT focus.

Keywords

SPECK Block cipher, Lightweight, FPGA, IoT, Throughput.

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