Reconfigurable Integrated Optical Interferometer Network-Based Physically Unclonable Function
This work addresses the need for secure hardware primitives for cybersecurity applications by proposing a novel optical PUF, offering a high number of challenge-response pairs.
This paper explores the use of a large integrated linear optical device with Mach-Zehnder interferometers as a physically unclonable function (PUF). They found that their prototype device can generate approximately 6.85x10^35 challenge-response pairs, with challenges quickly reconfigurable by tuning the interferometer array.
In this article we describe the characteristics of a large integrated linear optical device containing Mach-Zehnder interferometers and describe its potential use as a physically unclonable function. We propose that any tunable interferometric device of practical scale will be intrinsically unclonable and will possess an inherent randomness that can be useful for many practical applications. The device under test has the additional use-case as a general-purpose photonic manipulation tool, with various applications based on the experimental results of our prototype. Once our tunable interferometric device is set to work as a physically unclonable function, we find that there are approximately 6.85x10E35 challenge-response pairs, where each challenge can be quickly reconfigured by tuning the interferometer array for subsequent challenges.