LAUSR

ABSTRACT Although studies have investigated the effects of flicker noise on randomness, such effects demand further examination. Despite the random nature of flicker noise, a coloured distribution is observed in the power spectral density of flicker noise, indicating to a correlation in between adjacent samples. Studies have employed ring oscillators (ROs) that produce random numbers by sampling the digitised analogue signals of their outputs. This sampling procedure may change the spectral properties of flicker noise resulting from the folding effect of noise. Another topic of interest regarding sampled flicker noise is its random behaviour. To investigate the contribution of flicker noise, white noise, and their combination to randomness, we produce synthetic bit streams of these noise sources. From observations, we find that flicker noise contributes to the entropy of bit streams. Using the generated synthetic bit streams, we also explore the entropy dependence of a bit stream on the sampling period and analyse and compare the entropy levels of the outputs of ROs operating in strong and weak inversion. Results of the comparison demonstrate that only one RO operating in weak inversion may be sufficient to attain the required entropy level for qualifying the generated bit stream as random. The results of the analysis are also confirmed by measurements. In addition, the paper proposes an efficient design of a RO-based random number generator.