Device Authentication by Physical Unclonable Functions

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are very efficient circuits which are able to extract secrets from physical characteristic of any integrated circuit (IC). Wires and transistors have inherent delay characteristics. PUF designs make use of these characteristics which are different for every chip. They vary from chip to chip. Thus PUFs are used for low cost authentication of each and every individual IC. PUFs generate volatile secret keys which are able to perform cryptographic operations.