A Current Comparator Based Physical Unclonable Function with High Reliability and Energy Efficiency
Qiang Zhao, Yuan Cao, Xiaojin Zhao, Chip-Hong Chang · 2018
In this paper, we present a novel physical unclonable function (PUF) based on the current comparator. This design converts the process variation of the current comparator's internal transistors to a 1-bit digital output. By introducing the proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) and positive feedback mechanisms, the reliability of the proposed implementation is significantly enhanced. In addition, the proposed design has been validated by our extensive post-layout simulations using 65nm CMOS technology. With the working temperature varying from -40°C to 120°C and the supply voltage varying from 1.0V to 1.4V, the average reliability is reported to be 99.05% and the uniqueness is 49.96%, respectively. Featuring a compact silicon area of 2533μm2, the entire circuitry consumes 1.65 pJ/bit at a throughput of 10 Mb/s. Moreover, the superior unpredictability of this design is verified by passing NIST randomness test.