Improving the quality of Ring Oscillator PUFs on FPGAs

Dominik Merli, Frederic Stumpf, Claudia Eckert

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

88 Scopus citations

Abstract

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) based on Ring Oscillators (ROs) are a promising primitive for FPGA security. However, the quality of their implementation depends on several design parameters. In this paper, we show that ring oscillator frequencies strongly depend on surrounding logic. Based on these findings, we propose a strategy for improving the quality of RO PUF designs by placing and comparing ROs in a chain-like structure. We also show that an increased RO runtime and RO disabling has a clear positive effect on the quality of a RO PUF. We implemented a RO PUF key generation system on an FPGA using our design strategy. Our results clearly indicate that our proposed design strategy can significantly improve the quality of a RO PUF implementation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 5th Workshop on Embedded Systems Security, WESS '10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event5th Workshop on Embedded Systems Security, WESS '10 - Scottsdale, AZ, United States
Duration: 24 Oct 201024 Oct 2010

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 5th Workshop on Embedded Systems Security, WESS '10

Conference

Conference5th Workshop on Embedded Systems Security, WESS '10
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityScottsdale, AZ
Period24/10/1024/10/10

Keywords

  • FPGA
  • Fuzzy extractor
  • Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)
  • Ring Oscillator

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