Error-Correcting Codes for Practical PUF Authentication: From Analysis to a Lightweight Protocol

Pedro Xavier Diogo Gomes

Key information

Authors:

Pedro Xavier Diogo Gomes (Pedro Xavier Diogo Gomes)

Supervisors:

Ricardo Jorge Fernandes Chaves (Ricardo Jorge Fernandes Chaves); João Miguel Lourenço Ribeiro (João Ribeiro)

Published in

November 3, 2025

Abstract

The exponential growth of digital systems and the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) have intensified the demand for efficient and reliable security mechanisms. With billions of connected devices expected worldwide, traditional software-based approaches struggle to meet the stringent constraints of IoT environments due to key storage vulnerabilities and computational overhead. To address these limitations, this work investigates the use of Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) as lightweight hardware primitives for authentication and key establishment. In this project, a complete simulation framework was developed to model PUF behaviour, integrate various error-correcting codes (ECCs), and evaluate their effectiveness in mitigating response instability. The framework automates multiple protocol executions, measures reliability and failure rates, and compares ECC schemes in terms of performance and resource efficiency. Building on these results, a lightweight PUF-based authentication and key exchange protocol was implemented, demonstrating the feasibility of achieving secure and low-cost identification for IoT devices. The main contribution of this work lies in providing a practical, end-to-end process for designing, implementing, and evaluating PUF-based security protocols supported by ECCs. This includes a modular software architecture that can be extended for future experimentation and optimisation. The results highlight that, through careful code design and protocol tuning, it is possible to achieve robust authentication with minimal computational cost, paving the way toward deployable PUF-based security solutions for constrained devices.