Exploring Delay-based PUFs for Energy-Efficient Low-Overhead Security of Wearable Devices

2026-07-15

AI Summary

This work addresses the critical privacy and security challenges posed by continuous collection and transmission of sensitive data—such as location and heart rate—from wearable devices, which demand low-power, lightweight security mechanisms. The authors propose a hardware-based security solution leveraging delay-based physically unclonable functions (PUFs), presenting the first systematic evaluation and optimization of arbiter PUFs and hybrid oscillator arbiter (HOA) PUFs for energy efficiency in wearable platforms. Through a low-power circuit design, the approach achieves highly robust key generation with negligible system overhead: the arbiter PUF consumes only 25 μW, while the HOA PUF reduces power consumption further to just 2.7 μW, significantly outperforming existing methods in terms of energy efficiency.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) was introduced almost two decades ago. In the past two decades, technology has seen huge advancements. Many devices have become powerful and have less power consumption. Many IoT architectures and environments were introduced to help make life easier, especially in wearable devices. The market for these wearable devices has constantly increased over the years and is expected to reach its maximum in the next couple of years. They also pose a threat to users' privacy and security because they constantly store and transmit personal information such as location, heart rate, and other sensitive data. Therefore, addressing the security vulnerabilities is a crucial aspect of this research. This paper presents a hardware-assisted, energy-efficient, low-overhead security solution for wearable devices. Specifically, two Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) architectures: Arbiter PUF and Hybrid Oscillator Arbiter (HOA) PUF are analyzed for integration in IoT systems. The result shows that Arbiter PUF consumes 25 $μ$W, whereas HOA PUF consumes only 2.7 $μ$W to generate keys for cryptographic purposes. These architectures introduce minimal power overhead while providing robust security, making them well suited for resource-constrained IoT ecosystems.

Problem

• wearable devices
• security vulnerabilities
• privacy
• IoT security
• energy-efficient security

Innovation

• Physical Unclonable Function
• Delay-based PUF
• Energy-efficient security
• Wearable IoT devices
• Low-overhead cryptography