Trustable Digital Design Counter-Measures against Eavesdropping and Man-in-the-Middle Attacks in Qi Wireless Power Transfer Protocol

Abstract

Qi is a wireless power transfer protocol by which power can be transferred from a wireless power transmitter to a wireless power receiver. The power receiver controls the power that will be transmitted from the power transmitter by sending several forms of control packets to power transmitter as necessary. But under the current specifications of the protocol, there is no authentication mechanism by which a power transmitter can recognize whether a packet is sent from the power receiver or it is a spoofed packet sent by an attacker. Also, there is no mechanism of confidentiality due to which message content of some important packets are disclosed to eavesdroppers. This work deals with digital design of security measures by VHDL in Xilinx ISE to remove these weaknesses of the protocol and will show simulation results of the designed schematics by ISim simulator. However, the manufacturers of power transmitters and power receivers have to integrate this hardware based security solution to their existing systems to implement security measures of the protocol, which is beyond the scope of this work.

Keywords: Authentication, confidentiality, trustable digital design, VHDL, Xilinx ISE