Authentication of optical physical unclonable functions based on single-pixel detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-imaging optical PUF authentication method using single-pixel detection, achieving high security and system miniaturization by analyzing scattered light fluctuations without traditional imaging.

Contribution

It presents a novel non-imaging scheme for optical PUF authentication that surpasses conventional imaging methods in miniaturization and security against reverse engineering.

Findings

False accept rate reduced to 10^-28 with increased key length and SNR

System miniaturization enabled by small speckle size detection

Robustness validated for real authentication applications

Abstract

Physical unclonable function (PUF) has been proposed as a promising and trustworthy solution to a variety of cryptographic applications. Here we propose a non-imaging based authentication scheme for optical PUFs materialized by random scattering media, in which the characteristic fingerprints of optical PUFs are extracted from stochastical fluctuations of the scattered light intensity with respect to laser challenges which are detected by a single-pixel detector. The randomness, uniqueness, unpredictability, and robustness of the extracted fingerprints are validated to be qualified for real authentication applications. By increasing the key length and improving the signal to noise ratio, the false accept rate of a fake PUF can be dramatically lowered to the order of 10^-28. In comparison to the conventional laser-speckle-imaging based authentication with unique identity information obtained from textures of laser speckle patterns, this non-imaging scheme can be implemented at small speckle size bellowing the Nyquist--Shannon sampling criterion of the commonly used CCD or CMOS cameras, offering benefits in system miniaturization and immunity against reverse engineering attacks simultaneously.