With the increase of devices connected to 5G services, the importance of tuning User Equipment (UE) to their assigned frequency slot becomes increasingly vital. This paper approached this issue by securing the control signals sent through a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) in digital beamforming radios. This was done by securing three distinct components: the transmitting end of the channel, the transmission medium, and the receiving end of the channel. To secure the transmitter, a module was created that monitors transmitted messages to ensure correct operation. For the security of the transmission medium, a comparison study was performed between different error detecting and correcting algorithms against the authors' own solution comparing which alternatives were more effective at reducing the errors on a transmission line. For the receiving end, a dynamic lock-and-key system was implemented to make sure that the radios know that they are connected to a legitimate device. These three components were simulated and evaluated individually to ensure that each one provided its part of the secure system, and a post-synthesis simulation of a system with all three solutions was then performed to show that these aspects together can create a cohesive secure system.

Semiconductors use on-chip components, referred to as instruments, for test, debugging, firmware programming, configuration and other important functions. The instruments are needed to ensure proper device operation, however, they may be exploited by an adversary in an attack. Many different actors are involved in semiconductor development and manufacturing, this makes it important to restrict access to instruments which should not be available for all users.In this paper, we propose an authenticated instrument sharing scheme, which makes instruments available for some users while remaining hidden and inaccessible for others. Also protecting users against inside threats, like hardware trojans, in third party instruments in the device. The scheme is implemented for instrument access within an IEEE Std. 1687 (IJTAG) network, which is a frequently used standard for on-chip instrument access and integration. When deployed, our solution is (1) secure, as users are only able to access instruments they are authorized to use, other instruments remain hidden, and (2) efficient, as all of the user’s instruments will be directly accessible through the IJTAG network, after a one-step authentication process, with no additional access time overhead. We demonstrate our solution with a use case.