On-Chip Antenna Arrays Based IC Fingerprinting and Assurance
Project ID:
P10_24
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Rashmi Jha
Email:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
Dr. Marty Emmert
Topic Areas:
Pseudo-Unique Fingerprint for Mass Production Components, Verification of Supply Chain Integrity, IoT Hardware Security Auditing Mechanism, Device Provenance Verification Using PCB-based PUFs
Abstract
As IC supply chain is becoming more and more complex, cost-effective ways to implement IC fingerprinting, monitoring of supply chain integrity, and IC reliability and assurance during its entire lifetime is needed. As these features can also be seen as add-ons because they come at a cost of performance, power, area, cost overhead, based on how important IC integrity for an organization is, it is important that integrity monitoring schemes can be integrated in any IC design on-demand basis, or on pre-fabricated CMOS dies based on application requirements. Additionally, since IoTs are designed for domain specific applications with various hardware-software combinations possible, it is difficult to perform all these security tests ahead of time before implementation. Therefore, it is important that the monitoring techniques can encompass both hardware, software, and firmware signatures. We propose to provide solutions for these problems by developing a route to integrate on-chip antenna arrays on any CMOS die either in Back-End-Of-Line in foundry or during packaging. Our approach will provide ability to monitor Electromagnetic spectrum of IC that encompasses hardware, software, and firmware signatures. This approach can be used for IC fingerprinting; detecting signatures of various components and foundries, thus, verifying provenance; mitigation of side-channel attacks as designers can optimize design and power of IC based on feedback from on-chip EM sensing; auditing of IoT hardware security.