Abstract
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are hardware security primitives that are increasingly being used for authentication and key generation in ICs and FPGAs. For space systems, they are a promising approach to meet the needs for secure communications at low cost. To this purpose, it is essential to determine if they are reliable in the space radiation environment. In this work we evaluate the Total Ionizing Dose effects on a delay-based PUF implemented in SRAM-FPGA, namely a Ring Oscillator PUF. Several major quality metrics have been used to analyze the evolution of the PUF response with the total ionizing dose. Experimental results demonstrate that total ionizing dose has a perceptible effect on the quality of the PUF response, but it could still be used for space applications by making some appropriate corrections.
Highlights
Securing sensitive information on low-cost satellite applications has become a major challenge for the space industry
This failure was related to the RS232 communication protocol and a reprogramming of the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) was necessary in order to recover normal functionality
Ring Oscillator (RO)-Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) leverage minor delay variations that exist between devices to support security functions such as authentication and key generation
Summary
Securing sensitive information on low-cost satellite applications has become a major challenge for the space industry. Typical approaches that include very expensive cryptographic primitives, non-volatile memory and analogous blocks cannot be afforded in these small space systems In this context, commercial Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have turned out to be a good solution due to their flexibility and cost. PUFs are a very promising security primitive used for authentication and key generation in IC and FPGAs. PUFs are a very promising security primitive used for authentication and key generation in IC and FPGAs These security primitives are based on the impossibility of creating two physically exactly identical ICs due to the influence of random and uncontrollable effects during the manufacturing process. These uncontrollable influences leave measurable random marks on some features which possess the potential to generate encryption keys directly associated to a device [1]. RO oscillation frequencies depend on (i) fixed conditions established at the design phase (i.e., number of stages, place&route, etc.);
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