Securing Analog Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits Through Shared Dependencies

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The transition to a horizontal integrated circuit (IC) design flow has raised concerns regarding the security and protection of IC intellectual property (IP). Obfuscation of an IC has been explored as a potential methodology to protect IP in both the digital and analog domains in isolation. However, novel methods are required for analog mixed-signal circuits that both enhance the current disjoint implementations of analog and digital security measures and prevent an independent adversarial attack of each domain. This paper demonstrates the vulnerabilities of implementing disjointed obfuscation techniques to protect analog mixed-signal ICs. In addition, a novel methodology is developed to generate functional and behavioral dependencies between the analog and digital domains that results in an increase in the adversarial key search space. The dependencies between the analog and digital keys result in a 3x increase in the number of iterations required to complete the SAT attack. An analysis of best practices is also provided to aid in the implementation of security measures for analog mixed-signal circuits.