Capstone Project
| Group | 2023-13 | Status | completed |
| Title | Physical Unclonable Function Design | ||
| Supervisor | G. Cowan | ||
| Description | Physical Unclonable Functions hold potential as hardware security primitives in various authentication schemes. These circuits accept a digital input of large width (64 bits or more), known as a challenge and output a digital word, often one bit, known as a response. The response is a function of the structure of the PUF but more importantly, the random variation in circuit manufacturing. Thus no two PUFs will generate the same responses across the challenge space. With such a large challenge space, PUFs cannot be exhaustively queried should they fall into the hands of an adversary.
Unfortunately, some known designs such as Arbiter PUFs are easy to predict once a few 100 challenge-response pairs (CRPs) are observed. What is needed in this project is the design of a circuit that has a more complex challenge-response space making it difficult to predict, even with advanced machine-learning algorithms. Simultaneously, the design must be impervious to noise, such that successive querying of the same challenge produces the same response. What makes this project multidisciplinary is that students will design an integrated circuit (the final deliverable will be a chip layout), however, they will also learn about hardware security, applying various PUF metrics, recently developed by a collaborator of Prof. Cowan. The design will potentially draw on analog and digital techniques, with some analog techniques being inspired by emulation of electromagnetic wave propagation on transmission lines. Finally, statistical measures draw on probability theory. |
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| Student Requirement | The group should have students who did well in ELEC 312 and who are taking COEN 451. Experience with analog filters, digital design is a plus. Other relevant courses would be ELEC 351, 367; COEN 313/315. Students will make heavy use of the Cadence suite of computer-aided IC design tools. Any previous experience is an asset. | ||
| Tools | Cadence ICFB tools | ||
| Number of Students | 5-6 | ||
| Students | A. Al-Sayyed, A. Bondis, A. Mahgoub, R. Saber, M. Tavakkoli, P-A Vrabie | ||
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