Peer pressure on identity: On requirements for disambiguating PUFs in noisy environment

The number of devices that are being connected by the Internet is growing rapidly and hence, safeguarding private information by incorporating hardware and software security measures has become crucial. Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have been proposed to enable lightweight hardware security which uses the inherent manufacturing variations as a way to generate unique signatures. However, given large-scale applications like the Internet of Things (IoT) that need to distinguish between millions of devices, it is an arduous task to identify a particular device that generates its signature using a PUF. Unreliable signatures due to various sources of noise complicate the problem that may lead to misidentification. This paper explores the various constraints for use of PUFs for large-scale authentication and develops certain minimum requirements on PUF utilization that can aid system designers in making informed decisions.