Photonic Physical Unclonable Functions: From the Concept to Fully Functional Device Operating in the Field
This work addresses the need for secure, real-world authentication mechanisms and random number generators, representing an incremental advancement by integrating existing methods into a functional device.
The paper tackled the challenge of creating a practical photonic Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) device for authentication and random number generation, resulting in a compact, low-cost device with long-term stability of 1 week, an operating temperature range of 50°C, and NIST-compliant true random numbers.
The scope of this paper is to demonstrate a fully working and compact photonic Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) device capable of operating in real life scenarios as an authentication mechanism and random number generator. For this purpose, an extensive experimental investigation of a Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) and a diffuser as PUF tokens is performed and the most significant properties are evaluated using the proper mathematical tools. Two different software algorithms, the Random Binary Method (RBM) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), were tested for optimized key extraction and error correction codes have been incorporated for enhancing key reproducibility. By taking into consideration the limitations and overall performance derived by the experimental evaluation of the system, the designing details towards the implementation of a miniaturized, energy efficient and low-cost device are extensively discussed. The performance of the final device is thoroughly evaluated, demonstrating a long-term stability of 1 week, an operating temperature range of 50C, an exponentially large pool of unique Challenge-Response Pairs (CRPs), recovery after power failure and capability of generating NIST compliant true random numbers.