Lightweight IoT Authentication Protocol Using PUFs in Smart Manufacturing Industry
Abdullah Mohammed Alharthi, Fahad S. Altuwaijri · Electronics · 2025
Over recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely adopted in various domains, including modern manufacturing. However, IoT security remains a critical challenge due to resource constraints and deployment in unsecured environments. This paper introduces a lightweight IoT authentication protocol leveraging physical unclonable functions (PUFs) tailored for smart manufacturing. The protocol employs lightweight cryptographic techniques and a PUF-based challenge–response mechanism to ensure key security properties such as confidentiality, integrity, anonymity, and perfect forward secrecy. Through a combination of formal analysis, the proposed protocol demonstrates resilience against prevalent attacks while significantly reducing computational and communication overheads. Comparative performance analysis highlights its efficiency and suitability for resource-constrained IoT environments.