Concealable Oscillation-Based Physical Unclonable Function with a Single-Transistor Latch

Abstract

A concealable oscillation-based physical unclonable function (CO-PUF) with a FinFET is demons- trated for high-level security. The CO-PUF FinFET can significantly reduce both the footprint and the hardware cost of the components that generate the oscillating signal compared to a ring-oscillator PUF (RO-PUF) circuitry. The CO-PUF is based on random oscillation, which is attributed to a single-transistor latch (STL). Random bits are encoded as binary states of “1” and “0” depending on whether a CO-PUF FinFET shows oscillation or not. It satisfies the demand of randomness, uniqueness and stability. Additionally, the encryption key is untraceable with a key cloaking function when hacking is attempted.