Pure Magnetic Memory-Based PUFs: A Secure and Lightweight Solution for IoT Devices

In light of the growing prevalence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it has become essential to incorporate cryptographic protection techniques for high-security applications. Since IoT devices are resource-constraints in terms of power and area, finding cost-effective ways to enhance their security is necessary. Physical unclonable function (PUF) is considered a trusted hardware security mechanism that generates true and intrinsic randomness by extracting the inherent process variations of circuits. In this paper, a novel pure magnetic memory-based PUF is presented. The fundamental building blocks of the proposed PUF design are magnetic devices, the so-called mCells. These magnetoresistive devices exclusively utilize Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) components. Using purely MTJ in the main memory and sense amplifier in the proposed PUF leads to high randomness, high reliability, low power, and ultra-compact occupation area. The Monte Carlo HSPICE simulation results demonstrate that the proposed PUF achieves a uniqueness of 49.89%, uniformity of 50.02 %, power consumption of 1.43 µW, and an area occupation of 0.01 µm2 per bit.