Threshold Physical Unclonable Functions

Abstract

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have been proposed as a tamper-resistant alternative to the traditional methods for secret key generation and challenge-response authentication. Although many different types of PUFs have been presented, the search for more efficient, reliable and secure PUF designs continues. In this paper, we introduce a new class of PUFs, called threshold PUFs. We show that, in principle, any n- input threshold logic gate can be used as a base for building an n-input PUF. This opens up the possibility of using a rich body of knowledge on threshold logic implementations for designing PUFs. As a proof of concept, we implement and evaluate binary and ternary PUFs based on recently proposed threshold logic flip-flops.