Enabling Efficient Regular Expression Matching at the Edge through Domain-Specific Architectures

In Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, many high-demanding applications are cut off due to the limited computational resources and the necessity to keep energy consumption as low as possible. For instance, pattern matching is a complex kernel for many essential applications, such as computer security, and the high computational and energy requirements can strongly limit its use. This paper proposes a system that combines an efficient Domain-Specific Architecture for Regular Expressions to enable host-based intrusion detection systems on edge FPGA-based devices. We demonstrate comparable execution times and remarkable energy efficiency improvements compared to a Raspberry PI. Moreover, our work aims to facilitate complex tasks offloading (such as security ones) in constrained scenarios while keeping a low energy profile and comparable performance.