Hardware Security for DSP Circuits Using Key-Based Time-Dependent Obfuscation

Integrated circuit (IC) design flow undergoes multistep process concentrating on major factors like power, time, and area. By side of this, hardware security became major consideration factor due to increase in hardware design vulnerabilities. Most of the vendors use intellectual property (IP) cores and proceed with further design process which includes some suspicious activities during design flow making designers to ensure design trust by reevaluating. This increased focus on suspicious activities which leads to attacks such as reverse engineering, illegal use of IC/IP, and illegal IC overbuilding. Obfuscation can prevent such activities by obfuscating the IP/IC functionality using concept of secret keys. This paper proposes advance technique of random natured time-dependent obfuscation for sequential circuits. This method protects the design functionality controlled by control signals along with datapath obfuscation, which increases circuit security level compared to existing obfuscation methods. This concept is applicable to any DSP applications. It ensures high degree of security with low power and area overheads.