Effects of aging and compensation mechanisms in ordering based RO-PUFs

• Results of an accelerated aging test applied on ROs are presented.
• The effects of aging on ordering based RO-PUFs are examined.
• A compensation method to protect the 100% robustness of the PUF structure is proposed.

With the increasing need for highly secure systems, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged within the last decade. Ordering based Ring Oscillator (RO) PUFs are one of the best performing structures with their robustness and suitability to FPGA implementations. Even though the performance of the ordering based RO-PUFs have been analyzed in detail, effects of aging have not been studied before. In this work, we present the results of an accelerated aging test applied to analyze the effects of aging on ROs. Then, the effects of aging on ordering based RO-PUFs are examined. Finally, a compensation method to protect the 100% robustness claim of the PUF structure is proposed and its influence on the circuit performance is presented.