Abstract
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are primitives that are designed to leverage naturally occurring variations to produce a random bitstring. Current PUF designs are typically implemented in silicon or utilize variations found in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. Because of this, existing designs are insufficient for the authentication of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). In this paper, we propose a novel PUF design that leverages board variations in a manufactured PCB to generate unique and stable IDs for each PCB. In particular, a single copper trace is used as a source of randomness for bitstring generation. The trace connects three notch filter structures in series, each of which is designed to reject specific but separate frequencies. The bitstrings generated using data measured from a set of PCBs are analyzed using statistical tests to illustrate that high levels of uniqueness and randomness are achievable.
Highlights
Counterfeit electronic components are an increasing concern in the global supply chain of electronic goods
The proposed NotchPUF is fabricated on a 50 mm by 50 mm, 2-layer FR-4 Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) with a thickness of 1.6 mm and a relative permittivity ε r of 4.8
A novel Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) called NotchPUF is proposed that utilizes PCB variations in notch filter structures for the creation of unique IDs for PCBs
Summary
Counterfeit electronic components are an increasing concern in the global supply chain of electronic goods. Most of the applications that use these bitstrings require that they be random and unique among the population, and reproducible across adverse environmental conditions While many of these techniques have matured for manufactured ICs, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, opportunities for improving anti-counterfeiting techniques for PCBs still exist. To address this board-level security gap, we propose a novel physical unclonable function for PCBs that contains multiple structures to help increase the amount of entropy extracted from a single copper board trace. The proposed solution, called NotchPUF, consists of a number of interdigital capacitor copper trace structures fabricated on the top layer of a 2-layer FR-4 PCB These structures are designed and tuned to reject 1, 2 and 3 GHz frequencies with various attenuation factors.
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