A Physical Unclonable Function Based on a Differential Subthreshold PMOS Array with 9.73 × 10−4 Stabilized BER and 1.3 pJ/bit in 65 nm
Benjamin Zambrano, Sebastiano Strangio, Esteban Garzón, Alessandro Catania, Giuseppe Iannaccone, Marco Lanuzza · Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications · 2025
This paper introduces a physical unclonable function (PUF) based on a differential array of minimum-sized PMOS devices. Each response bit is obtained by comparing the two analog outputs of the differential array through a dynamic comparator with a trimmable offset. This offset is effectively used to mask potentially unstable response bits. To further improve PUF reliability, spatial majority voting is also implemented, resulting in a near-zero (<3.12×10−9) bit error rate (BER) at 1.2 V and 25 °C. Under variations in supply voltage (0.8–1.3 V) and temperature (0–75 °C), the native bit error rate of 3.5% is reduced to 9.73×10−4 after stabilization, consuming only 1.37 pJ per output bit.