Efficient, Robust Digital TRNG architectures¶
(Top) Flicker noise and finite circuit bandwidth result in filtered noise used for random bit generation, leading to correlation between successive random bits. (Bottom) Correlation and bias from an imperfect physical RNG are removed in two all-digital post-processing stages
The increase in the volume of private data communication between networked devices has created a demand for true random number generators (TRNGs) which are key building blocks in a variety of digital cryptographic systems. Hardware TRNG implementations typically exploit device noise as an entropy source for random bit generation [2]. TRNGs based on timing jitter are simpler to implement in scaled technologies but are dissipative and achieve lower performance compared to metastability-based TRNGs [4]. However, metastability-based TRNGs typically require careful design and calibration to mitigate the impact of PVT variation. Moreover, both jitter and metastability-based TRNGs in standard CMOS exhibit weak randomness due to correlation arising from substrate coupling and 1/f noise, affecting both the quality and output rate of generated bits.
This project presents an energy-efficient versatile, NIST-compliant TRNG architecture capable of generating random bits from an imperfect physical random-number-generator (PRNG) with significant levels of bias and correlation. The key idea behind the proposed architecture is to exploit efficient hardware implementations of 1) a Markov chain-based de-correlator that removes the autocorrelation of an incoming PRNG bit-stream, and 2) a 4-level, Iterative Von-Neumann (IVN) corrector that removes bias from de-correlated bits. The ASIC implementation of the TRNG, combined with a PRNG based on sense amplifier meta-stability, achieves a peak energy efficiency of 2.58 pJ/bit while operating over a wide voltage and frequency range of 0.5–1 V and 4.4–200 MHz respectively.
More details will be posted upon publication of this work.