Quasi-Adiabatic SRAM Based Silicon Physical Unclonable Function

Abstract

AbstractSilicon Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a general hardware security primitive for security vulnerabilities. Recently, Quasi-adiabatic logic based physical unclonable function (QUALPUF) has ultra low-power dissipation; hence it is suitable to implement in low-power portable electronic devices such radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless sensor networks (WSN), etc. In this paper, we present a design of 4-bit QUALPUF which is based on static random access memory (SRAM) for low-power portable electronic devices and then shows the post-layout simulation and measurement results. To evaluate the uniqueness and reliability, the 4-bit QUALPUF is implemented in 0.18 $$\upmu$$ μ m standard CMOS process with 1.8 V supply voltage. The 4-bit QUALPUF occupies 58.7$$\times$$ × 15.7 $$\upmu \mathrm {m}^{2}$$ μ m 2 of layout area. The post-layout simulation results illustrate that the uniqueness calculated from the inter-die HDs of the 4-bit QUALPUF is 47.58%, the average reliability is 95.10%, and the the energy dissipation is 29.73 fJ/cycle/bit. The functional measurement results of the fabricated chip are the same as the post-layout simulation results.