Spoofing Prevention via RF Power Profiling in Wireless Network-on-Chip

Abstract

With increased integration in SoCs, the Network-on-Chip (NoC) connecting of cores provides low-latency and high-throughput communication. Due to limits of scaling of electrical wires, especially for long multi-mm distances on-chip, Wireless NoC (WNoC) have shown promise. Since WNoCs can provide low-latency one-hop transfers across the chip, there has been a recent surge in research demonstrating their benefits. WNoCs provide unique security challenges that have yet been unexplored. We study the potential threat of spoofing attacks in WNoCs due to malicious hardware trojans, and introduce Veritas, a drop-in solution that detects and corrects such spoofing attacks. Exploiting the static propagation environment, Veritas associates a node to a power profile. We demonstrate that, with small area and power overheads, Veritas works across a variety of settings.