Design of Memristive Lightweight Encryption For In-Memory Image Steganography

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Computer Architecture, Faculty of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

2 Department of Computer Engineering, Yadegar-e-Imam Khomeini (RAH) Shahre Rey Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Electrical Engineering, Khatam al-Anbia University, Tehran, Iran

10.22108/jcs.2026.149790.1214

Abstract

With the expansion of data-intensive applications and increasing data volumes, providing an efficient solution to address growing energy consumption and performance degradation caused by the transfer of large amounts of data between the processor and the main memory has become a severe challenge. The frequent transfer of large amounts of data between internal chip units, memories, and their interconnections exacerbates the vulnerability of the data being accessed. Employing a memristive Computation In-Memory-Array (CIM-A) architecture limits data transfer, thereby addressing both challenges. By integrating lightweight cryptography, developed to be applied in hardware-constrained devices, with CIM-A architectures, the significant energy and latency overheads associated with a high rate of data transfers across the architecture’s main blocks and interconnections can be mitigated. This paper implements two standard lightweight stream ciphers, Trivium and Grain-128a, for CIM using stateful material implication (IMPLY) logic to address the performance challenges. In addition to redesigning the cryptographic structures, we reduce the hardware complexity of conventional IMPLY-based implementations by proposing an efficient method for shifting data within the shift registers. Applying the proposed data-shifting method to the registers of these ciphers reduces the number of computational steps and decreases memristors' energy consumption by up to 42% and 44%, respectively, compared to conventional implementations. Finally, the performance of the proposed circuits is evaluated in a steganography application, demonstrating their practical efficiency.

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Main Subjects

Journal of Computing and Security

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 10 October 2026

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History

  • Receive Date: 20 July 2026
  • Revise Date: 17 September 2026
  • Accept Date: 10 October 2026

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