The radio frequency identification (RFID) system is one of the most important technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) that tracks single or multiple objects. This technology is extensively used and attracts the attention of many researchers in various fields, including healthcare, supply chains, logistics, asset tracking, and so on. To reach the required security and confidentiality requirements for data transfer, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is a powerful solution, which ensures a tag/reader mutual authentication and guarantees data integrity. In this paper, we first review the most relevant ECC-based RFID authentication protocols, focusing on their security analysis and operational performances. We compare the various lightweight ECC primitive implementations designed for RFID applications in terms of occupied area and power consumption. Then, we highlight the security threats that can be encountered considering both network attacks and side-channel attacks and analyze the security effectiveness of RFID authentication protocols against such types of attacks. For this purpose, we classify the different threats that can target an ECC-based RFID system. After that, we present the most promising ECC-based protocols released during 2014–2021 by underlining their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we perform a comparative study between the different protocols mentioned regarding network and side-channel attacks, as well as their implementation costs to find the optimal one to use in future works.

This work presents new approaches to minimize the number of test frequencies for linear analog circuits. The cases of single and multiple fault detection regions for multiple test measures are considered. We first address the case when the injected faults have a single detection region in the frequency band. We show that the problem can be formulated as a set covering problem with a matrix having the consecutive-ones property for which the network simplex algorithm turns out to be very efficient. A second approach consists in modeling the problem by means of an interval graph, leading to its solution with a specific polynomial-time algorithm. A case-study of a biquadratic filter is presented for illustration purposes. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the two different approaches solve the optimization problem very fast. Finally, the optimization problems arising from multiple detection regions are modeled and solution approaches are discussed.

Consensus protocols and peer-provided proofs are the necessary components used to establish trust in blockchain systems. Verifiable proofs that guarantee an elapsed time based on security components h...