Comparative Analysis of SRAM PUF Temperature Susceptibility on Embedded Systems

TL;DR

This paper compares the temperature susceptibility of SRAM PUFs on two similar embedded microcontrollers, demonstrating how design differences affect PUF reliability across temperature variations.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of SRAM PUF performance on similar devices under temperature changes, aiding in early design decisions for secure embedded systems.

Findings

One SRAM device outperforms the other across temperature ranges.

Temperature significantly impacts SRAM PUF reliability.

Design differences influence PUF effectiveness.

Abstract

An SRAM Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) can distinguish SRAM modules by analyzing the inherent randomness of their start-up behavior. However, the effectiveness of this technique varies depending on the design and fabrication of the SRAM module. This study compares two similar microcontrollers, both equipped with on-chip SRAM, to determine which device produces a better SRAM PUF. Both microcontrollers are programmed with an identical SRAM PUF authentication routine and tested under varying ambient temperatures (ranging from 10 {\deg}C to 50 {\deg}C) to evaluate the impact of temperature on SRAM PUF performance. One embedded SRAM works significantly better than the other, even though the two models are closely related. The presented results can be used early in the design process to compare arbitrary on-chip SRAM models and see which is best suited for implementing an SRAM PUF.