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University of New Mexico

DETECTING DELAY ANOMALIES INTRODUCED BY HARDWARE TROJANS USING CHIP AVERAGING AND AN ON-CHIP HIGH RESOLUTION EMBEDDED TEST STRUCTURE

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

A hardware Trojan (HT) detection method is presented that is based on measuring and detecting small systematic changes in path delays introduced by capacitive loading effects or series inserted gates of HTs. The path delays are measured using a high resolution on-chip embedded test structure called a time-to-digital converter (TDC) that provides approx. 25 ps of timing resolution. A calibration method for the TDC as well as a chip-averaging technique are demonstrated to nearly eliminate chip-to-chip and within-die process variation effects on the measured path delays across chips, which simplifies the process and enhances the effectiveness of a simulation-based golden model. Path delay tests are applied to multiple copies of a 90 nm custom ASIC chip which incorporates two copies of an AES macro as well as a SPICE-level transient simulation model. The AES macros are exact replicas except for the insertion of several additional gates in the second hardware copy, which are designed to model HTs. Statistical detection methods are used to isolate and detect systematic changes introduced by these additional gates and a set of Trojan emulation circuits also inserted into the macros.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Computer Engineering
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Year
2016

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Ismari, Dylan
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Plusquellic, Jim
  • Zarkesh-Ha, Payman
  • Saqib, Fareena
  • Chakraborty, Raj

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

Language dc:language
English

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ece_etds/122
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digitalrepository.unm.edu:ece_etds-1121

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of New Mexico
Base URL
digitalrepository.unm.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Ismari, Dylan. DETECTING DELAY ANOMALIES INTRODUCED BY HARDWARE TROJANS USING CHIP AVERAGING AND AN ON-CHIP HIGH RESOLUTION EMBEDDED TEST STRUCTURE. Dissertation thesis, 2016. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ece_etds/122