FDPUF: Frequency-Domain PUF for Robust Authentication of Edge Devices

Abstract

Counterfeiting, overproduction, and cloning of integrated circuits (ICs) and associated hardware have emerged as major security concerns in the modern globalized microelectronics supply chain. One way to combat these issues effectively is to deploy hardware authentication techniques that utilize physical unclonable functions (PUFs). PUFs utilize intrinsic variations in hardware that occur during the manufacturing and fabrication process to generate device-specific fingerprints or immutable signatures that cannot be replicated by counterfeits and clones. However, unavoidable factors like environmental noise and harmonics can significantly deteriorate the quality of the PUF signature. Besides, conventional PUF solutions are generally not amenable to in-field authentication of hardware, which has emerged as a critical need for Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices to detect physical attacks on them. In this article, we introduce frequency-domain PUF or FDPUF, a novel PUF that analyzes time-domain current waveforms in the frequency domain to create high-quality authentication signatures that are suitable for in-field authentication. FDPUF decomposes electrical signals into their spectral coefficients, filters out unnecessary low-energy components, reconstructs the waveforms, and generates high-quality digital fingerprints for device authentication purposes. Compared to the existing authentication mechanisms, the higher quality of the signatures through the frequency-domain analysis makes the proposed FDPUF more suitable for protecting the integrity of the edge computing hardware. We perform experimental measurements on FPGA and analyze FDPUF properties using the National Institute of Standards and Technology test suite to demonstrate that the FDPUF provides better uniqueness and robustness than its time-domain counterpart while being attractive for in-field authentication.