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Physically Unclonable Functions: Concept and Constructions

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Physically Unclonable Functions

Abstract

This chapter introduces the reader to the basic concept of a physically unclonable function or PUF. Many research results on this topic were published over recent years in a variety of contexts, and this chapter aims to bring some organisation into this. This is done by first agreeing on a convention for describing the functionality of PUFs and their relevant metrics, and by discussing a number of meaningful classifications in the zoo of proposed PUF constructions. Because of their application-friendly properties, the class of so-called intrinsic PUFs is of great interest. The main part of this chapter consists of a detailed description of all intrinsic PUF constructions known to date and a discussion on their implementation qualities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    By analogy with the Complexity Zoo [139] and the SHA-3 Zoo [140].

  2. 2.

    By unclonable we do not mean that it is impossible to create or obtain a facsimile of a person’s fingerprints; in fact human beings create copies of their fingerprints every time they touch a smooth surface.

  3. 3.

    We aim at giving an exhaustive overview of PUF proposals to date, but with the plethora of new constructions appearing in recent years, it is very likely that some are missing.

  4. 4.

    An alternative method of learning information about PUF response distributions is through physical modeling of the PUF class construction.

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  1. ESAT-COSIC, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, KU Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium

    Roel Maes

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Maes, R. (2013). Physically Unclonable Functions: Concept and Constructions. In: Physically Unclonable Functions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41395-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41395-7_2

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