Design and Analysis of Secure Quasi-Adiabatic Tristate Physical Unclonable Function

Hardware security modules have become quintessential as the digital systems continue evolving. The physical unclonable function (PUF) is a hardware security module that exploits the intrinsic variations in manufacturability of integrated circuits. Proposed quasi-adiabatic Tristate PUF is a weak PUF. This makes use of the inadvertent threshold voltage variations of PMOS transistors introduced during manufacturing. The design demonstrates lower energy consumption than those configured using comparable CMOS logic counterparts, under varying temperature and peak voltage conditions. The design has been compared against adiabatic PUF design solutions found in literature. The enhanced uniqueness and increased reliability characteristics even while operating at different environmental conditions have been presented. Its robustness against differential power analysis is analyzed using the variation analysis. The PUF design generates a 128-bit response, which can be very effectively used for Internet of Things and RFID applications requiring lower energy values to operate.