Performance of silicon OPUFs under variable input losses

Optical Physically Unclonable functions (OPUFs) use complex nonlinear behaviour to generate physical one-way functions. This has been experimentally demonstrated using small non-traditional variations of optical disk resonators [1]. It has been also proposed and numerically studied with plasmonic resonance enhancement [2]. The optical power in the input is a sensitive criterion to evaluate the performance of these OPUFs, not only because insertion losses may appear, but also because hacking power supplies is one of the most common side-channel attacks on secure systems. To the best of our knowledge, no prior comprehensive optical power analysis has been reported on OPUFs, hence the need to establish its impact in light of their future use in modern secure systems.