A DFA-based Distributed IP Watermarking Method Using Data Compression Technique

The IP (Intellectual Property) protection has been widely concerned by more semiconductor companies and research institutions, due to the rapid advances in deep sun-micron integrated circuits. A DFA (Deterministic Finite Automaton)-based distributed IP watermarking method is presented by using data compression technology. DFA is used for generating pseudorandom key stream and encrypting the original signature. The cipher text is generated, and then transformed into embedding coordinates and watermarks by specific data compression technology. Finally, the watermarks are denoted by some identical logic modules, and embedded in the LUTs (Lookup Table) of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) design. The contribution lies in the identification of the same ownership with much less watermark bits than most of other methods. The experiment results on Xilinx Virtex II Pro XC2VP4 FPGA show high security, a negligible resource increase and low circuit delay.