A Lightweight Reconfigurable RRAM-based PUF for Highly Secure Applications

Recently, the variability of resistive memory devices (RRAM) has become an attractive feature for hardware security in the form of a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF). Although several RRAM-based PUFs have appeared in the literature, they still suffer from some issues related to reliability, reconfigurability, and extensive integration cost. This paper presents a novel lightweight reconfigurable RRAM-based PUF (LRR-PUF) wherein multiple RRAM cells, connected to the same bit line and same transistor (1T4R), are used to generate a single bit response. The pulse programming method used is also innovative and exploits variations in the number of pulses needed to switch the RRAM cell as the primary entropy source of the PUF. The main feature of the proposed PUF is its integration with any RRAM architecture at almost no additional cost. Through extensive simulations, including the impact of temperature and voltage variations along with statistical characterization, we demonstrate that the LRR-PUF exhibits such attractive properties including high reliability (almost 100%), reconfigurability, uniqueness, cost, and efficiency.