Improved Security Approach based on AES algorithm for LST retrieval using satellite imagery in Radiation-Tolerant FPGAs

Transmission of sensitive data in space missions and particularly in satellite remote sensing to the ground station is exposed to multiple threats impacting the confidentiality of data, access unauthorized to the satellite system, in addition, the space environment causes several threats that can affect the hardware of satellites. This paper describes an improved approach to implement a secure Land Surface Temperature-Split Windows (LST-SW) algorithm based on the Advanced Encryption Standard using the Reconfigurable Dynamic Method for application on-board earth observation satellites implemented on radiation-tolerant Virtex-4QV FPGA. The experimental results showed that the proposed hardware secure implementation of the LST-SW algorithm using Xilinx Virtex-4QV FPGA achieves higher throughput of 907.644 Mbps sufficient for satellite remote sensing mission. Moreover, the suggested implementation consumes 4089 Slices and 4 BRAMs. Finally, the authors use security measurement analyses to verify the safety and performance of the proposed encryption LST-SW module.