QT-PUF: Quantum Tunneling Leakage Based PUF for Implantable IoMT Devices

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 21 May 2026] QT-PUF: Quantum Tunneling Leakage Based PUF for Implantable IoMT Devices Yueqi Ma, Vivek Mohan, Chip-Hong Chang, Emmanuel M. Drakakis The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) marks a shift toward decentralized healthcare, enabling continuous monitoring and personalized care through connected wearable and implantable devices. However, ensuring the trust and integrity of these devices themselves remains a major challenge, as physical compromise or counterfeiting can directly endanger patient safety, privacy, and data integrity. This work presents QT-PUF, a gate-tunneling-leakage-based physical unclonable function (PUF) that leverages quantum-mechanical gate leakage resulting from process-induced variations in standard CMOS devices. A differential readout circuit with a pseudo-resistor I-to-V frontend is proposed to convert the picoampere-level leakage variations into digital responses. Unlike existing PUFs such as those based on memory, ring oscillators, or arbiters, which are less suitable for ultralow-power IoMT devices (due to additional circuitry, power overhead, or poor stability), QT-PUF requires no external excitation or stabilization and operates under static bias. Simulation-based measurements for a \mathbf{65}~nm CMOS process demonstrate an entropy of \mathbf{0.9999998}, an FHD of \mathbf{0.5001}, and an average power (energy) consumption of \mathbf{96.04}~nW/bit (\mathbf{19.21}~fJ/bit, respectively) at \mathbf{1.2\,V} and \mathbf{35\,^{\circ}C} for the proposed PUF. It operates reliably across \mathbf{0.9}\text{--}\mathbf{1.3}~V and \mathbf{0}\text{--}\mathbf{100\,^{\circ}C} with an average BER below \mathbf{0.000163} across \mathbf{1.0}\text{--}\mathbf{1.3}~V and \mathbf{10}\text{--}\mathbf{70\,^{\circ}C} within the operating conditions of typical implantable devices. Comments: The paper has been accepted for presentation at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2605.22113 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2605.22113v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.22113 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Vivek Mohan [view email] [v1] Thu, 21 May 2026 07:46:02 UTC (2,154 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)