Design and Randomness Evaluation of Mixed-Signal TRNG for Low Power Applications

Abstract

A system design for security and privacy plays a major role in maintaining a firm, running a business, storing the database, adhering to fair play in entertainment sector. This requires generation of secret codes, passwords, security pin, which must be unpredictable and secure. To address these purposes, a method has been proposed to generate random numbers based on different criteria and one of the ways is through exploiting the available randomness exhibited by a physical source in any form. In this paper, we designed a True Random Number Generator Circuit which consumes very less power and utilizes the noise from the physical world to generate a random sequence. Basically, the circuit design comprises of a ring oscillator and a simple sample and hold block, which utilizes minimum power in generating the random output. Field Programmable Analog Array is used for hardware realization and implementation of the circuit. Ten different sequences having thousand bits each is tested for randomness using the NIST test suite. The positive results from these standard tests prove that the circuit generates true random number sequences.