TVI PUF: A Temperature- and Voltage-Independent PUF With High Resistance to Modeling Attacks

Key generation in cryptography is very important, as it helps secure digital communication. physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are among the circuits that ensure security at the hardware level by generating unique keys. However, PUFs are often affected by changes in temperature and voltage, which can impact their reliability. Additionally, PUFs are vulnerable to electromagnetic and modeling attacks, making it essential to use circuits that can resist such threats. In this letter, a temperature- and voltage-independent PUF (TVI PUF) is proposed. This circuit uses a novel two-step (pipeline) structure. This circuit incorporates pipelining and challenge obfuscation. This leads to enhanced reliability and improved resistance to modeling attacks. The proposed circuit is implemented on a Xilinx Zynq7 FPGA and tested under various conditions. The proposed circuit is resilient against both modeling and electromagnetic attacks and operates reliably across a temperature range of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$- 40~^{\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>C to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$150~^{\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>C. Measurement results show that the proposed circuit achieves a bit error rate (BER) of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.21\times 10{^{-}11 }$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, uniformity of 50.11%, and uniqueness of 49.89%. The proposed TVI PUF shows a vulnerability rate of 50.47% to modeling attacks. The high reliability (approximately zero BER) and low vulnerability to modeling attacks highlight the advantages of this circuit.