Threshold Voltage based Dual Memristor Crossbar PUF

IoT security plays a crucial role where smart devices are interconnected and one of these can give an intrusion access to the network if they are not secured. Physical unclonable function (PUF) comes in handy as an emerging lightweight hardware security primitive for key management and device authentication. In this research work, we propose a new architecture of PUF hardware based on memristor threshold voltage variation. Memristor manufacturing variations are exploited for the threshold voltage variation which makes the device unique. The selection from the proposed crossbars forms two connected memristors. The selections connect the formed voltage divider network to the input and ground. The output is probed at the middle node, which is the selected rows of the two crossbars. Voltage (challenge) is applied at selected pair of memristors through the corresponding columns and rows, and output (response) is taken from the selected rows. We believe this work will set a new direction for the researchers to explore manufacturing errors for PUF applications.