Atomic-scale Authentication with Resonant Tunneling Diodes
- PDF / 304,224 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 432 x 648 pts Page_size
- 112 Downloads / 213 Views
Atomic-scale Authentication with Resonant Tunneling Diodes J. Roberts1, I. E. Bagci2, M. A. M. Zawawi3, J. Sexton3, N. Hulbert1, Y. J. Noori1, C. S. Woodhead1, M. Missous3, M. A. Migliorato3, U. Roedig2 and R. J. Young1 1 Physics Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK. 2 School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK. 3 School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. ABSTRACT The room temperature electronic characteristics of resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) containing AlAs/InGaAs quantum wells are studied. Differences in the peak current and voltages, associated with device-to-device variations in the structure and width of the quantum well are analyzed. A method to use these differences between devices is introduced and shown to uniquely identify each of the individual devices under test. This investigation shows that quantum confinement in RTDs allows them to operate as physical unclonable functions. INTRODUCTION Inseparably linking a device to its identity provides a robust building block from which a secure system can be built. Authenticating such a device with a protocol, for example certification [1], generally requires the use of secret keys stored in integrated circuits. It has been shown that invasive and non-invasive attacks have the capability of learning these keys however, as they exist in a digital form on the chip. After being compromised, an attacker can pose as a trustworthy party and successfully authenticate themselves. The devices can be protected by making them tamper-resistant, but this requires significant resources. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) [2] have been proposed to create instance-specific secret keys using the random physical characteristics of ICs that are never stored in the system’s memory. The massmanufacture of components results in random variations during fabrication of the device, which can be exploited for use as PUFs. A number of different categories of PUFs have emerged including; delay PUFs [3], SRAM PUFs [4], butterfly PUFs [5], and bistable ring PUFs [6]. Existing PUFs suffer from a number of limitations, they often require significant resources to measure, are clonable with advanced manufacturing techniques, can be emulated, and are susceptible to sophisticated attacks. For instance, an SRAM PUF was successfully cloned within a period of 20 hours [7]. In this paper resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) are studied, with the variations in the quantum confinement they provide used to realize a PUF. The relative merits of this class of quantum confinement PUF (QC-PUF) are discussed. As the size of an electronic system decreases there is a limit beyond which quantum mechanics describes its behavior. In this regime, the atomic arrangement of a crystal structure becomes important to the properties of the system, such as quantum confinement [8]. Nanostructures containing thousands of atoms, such as quantum dots and wells, are highly unique, due to the inherent random nature of the
Data Loading...
