IC Counterfeiting is becoming serious issue. The
approach discussed here is to use Electromagnetic (EM) input
to an IC and measure its EM input output response. The idea
is to extract a signature from EM response which should be
unique to one IC. The main purpose of this work is to show
that it is possible to authenticate electronic chips from a nonintrusive
method, based on the use of RF waves. IC authentication
can be performed using Physical Unclonable Function (PUF).
PUF are based on process variation inherent to semiconductor
fabrication process. EM based authentication is also based on
the same principle. Nevertheless, unlike PUF such a method does
not need dedicated circuitry and thus may have lower cost of
implementation and may be easier to industrialize. This work first
focuses on FPGA which are a common target of counterfeiting.
We first prove that FPGAs are sensitive to EM excitations and
find the optimum configuration using a lightweight marker not
as complex as PUF to optimize the sensitivity to EM excitation.
Finally, a post processing is performed on the EM measurement
to get the FPGA signature which is later used for authentication.
The post-processing operations are being developed in order to
deal with aging effects and other measurements issues commonly
seen with RF measurement.
