Abstract
Advancements in digital microfluidic biochip (DMFB) technologies are paving the way for low-cost and automated platforms for implementing bio-protocols. However, the deployment of DMFBs outside of controlled settings will make them vulnerable to intellectual property (IP) theft. Bio-protocol development requires large investments for cross-domain innovations in biochemical analysis, microfluidics, and cyberphysical systems. We propose a watermarking technique for bio-protocol IP protection - a first in microfluidics - that hierarchically embeds a secret signature across these domains. Such a signature can be exclusively attributed to the owner (like a hash). The proposed solution takes into account the inherent variability in domain-specific parameters such as mixing ratio, sensor calibration, and incubation time. We describe watermarking techniques of varying complexities for different bio-protocol steps. These include watermarking for bio-protocol synthesis parameters and the cyberphysical systems control path parameters. A watermarking scheme based on integer linear programming is proposed for the sample-preparation step of a bio-protocol. The practicality of our solution is demonstrated through case studies involving an immunoassay and several mixing ratios required in the sample-preparation process of bio-protocols. The effectiveness of this approach is evaluated through various security metrics: proof of ownership score, the probability of successful tampering of the watermark, and the probability of coincidence. We also analyze the integrity of the watermark against various possible attacks: brute force search, the insertion of a new watermark, and the watermarking of more parameters.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 8673796 |
Pages (from-to) | 2901-2915 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2019 |
Keywords
- Intellectual factors
- microfluidics
- water-marking
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
- Computer Networks and Communications