An Enhanced Event-Based Dynamic Authentication Protocol Leveraging Arbiter PUF for IoT Devices

We propose a secure and lightweight authentication protocol tailored for resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) environments. Widely adopted approaches that store authentication data on IoT devices are inadequate, particularly in the presence of physical attacks. Building upon the Event-Based Dynamic protocol, we integrate an Enhanced Arbiter Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to eliminate the need for static key storage and strengthen resistance against physical attacks. The proposed design introduces new Registration and Authentication phases that dynamically generate session keys using hardware-rooted entropy. Formal verification using the Tamarin Prover confirms the protocol’s correctness, mutual authentication, replay resistance, and confidentiality. Informal verification demonstrates robustness against node capture, impersonation, and guessing attacks. Simulation results show that the protocol achieves a throughput of 170–180 authentications per second, with communication overhead of 326–329 bytes and RAM usage of 212–215 bytes per client. These results confirm the protocol’s practicality and scalability for real-world IoT deployment.