Gas Sensor Physically Unclonable Function-Based Lightweight Bidirectional Authentication Protocol for Gas Sensor Networks

In gas sensor networks, users can access the data collected by the sensor nodes, but there is a risk of data leakage during transmission. This paper proposes a lightweight bidirectional authentication protocol based on gas sensor physically unclonable functions (GS-PUFs) with authentication technology to guarantee the reliability of data from sensor nodes. A sensor PUF array is constructed by preparing gas sensors to enhance the data security of the physical layer and reduce hardware resource consumption. The authentication part of the protocol mainly uses lightweight encryption methods, consisting of PUF data, one-way cryptographic hash functions, and iso-or functions, to reduce the computational overhead of the authentication process. The protocol security is enhanced by encrypting the GS-PUF response as an irreversible hash value and verifying the hash value by the user, server, and sensor node to complete bidirectional authentication. The test results demonstrate that the protocol, verified through the ProVerif formal tool, can resist impersonation, replay, node tampering, and cloning attacks. Among the compared schemes, this protocol offers the highest security and the least resource overhead, making it effectively applicable in the Internet of Things and other fields.