Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) Based Authentication for Router Security

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) represent a promising solution to modern security challenges by leveraging intrinsic hardware variations to generate unique responses. This paper explores the implementation of PUF-based authentication for enhancing router security, particularly in resource-constrained IoT environments. PUFs provide lightweight yet robust authentication by dynamically generating device-specific keys, mitigating vulnerabilities such as replay and impersonation attacks. The study evaluates three PUF circuit configurations with varying critical path delays, examining their trade-offs in speed, unpredictability, and resource optimization. Through network simulations in ns-3, the proposed approach demonstrates superior scalability, low computational overhead, and high-security levels, making it ideal for IoT networks. This work not only highlights the effectiveness of PUFs in secure authentication but also lays the groundwork for future advancements in scalable and adaptive IoT security solutions.