Efficient Methods for Composite Field Arithmetic

E. Savas and C. K. Koc
Technical Report, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oregon State University, 19 pages, December 1999.

Abstract

We propose new and efficient algorithms for basic arithmetic (squaring, multiplication, and inversion) operations in the Galois fields GF(2^k) where k is a composite integer as k=nm. These algorithms are suitable for obtaining fast software implementations of the field operations on microprocessors and signal processors, and they are particularly useful for applications in public-key cryptography where k in [160,512].