Title: Design and implementation of a ring oscillator-based physically unclonable function on field programmable gate array to enhance electronic security

Authors: Massoud Masoumi; Ali Dehghan

Addresses: Islamshahr Azad University, Islamshahr Branch, P.O. Box 33135-369, Sayad Shirazi Ave., Namaz Sqr., Tehran, Iran ' Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 14155-111, No. 7 Jalal-Al-Ahmad Highway, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are functions that generate a set of random responses when stimulated by a set of pre-defined challenges. They are mostly used for hardware verification and/or device authentication mechanisms, access control, protection of sensitive intellectual property (IP) on devices and protection against insecure hardware connections and communications. In FPGA devices, PUFs are instantiated by exploiting the propagation delay differences of signals caused by manufacturing process variations. In this work, we describe a real implementation of ring oscillator-based PUF on Xilinx FPGAs and illustrate how such architecture is mapped into the FPGA fabric. Using this architecture, we obtained a unique 45-bit code which can be used to identify a chip between many similar devices of the same family in order to provide a reliable access control and authentication mechanism.

Keywords: electronic security; physically unclonable functions; PUFs; FPGA implementation; ring oscillator.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2020.108295

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2020 Vol.12 No.3, pp.243 - 261

Received: 22 Nov 2018
Accepted: 30 May 2019
Published online: 08 Jul 2020 *

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