Ring Oscillator Physical Unclonable Function with Multi Level Supply Voltages

Abstract

One of the most common types of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) is the ring oscillator PUF (RO-PUF), in which the output bits are obtained by comparing the oscillation frequencies of different ring oscillators. In this paper we design a new type of ring oscillator PUF in which the different inverters composing the ring oscillators can be supplied by different voltages. The new RO-PUF can be used to (1) increase the maximum number of possible challenge/response pairs produced by the PUF; (2) generate a high number of bits while consuming a low area; (3) improve the reliability of the PUF in case of temperature variations. We present the basic idea of the new RO-PUF and then discuss its applications.