High-quality random number sequences extracted from chaos post-processed by phased-array semiconductor laser

Abstract

<sec> With the rapid development of the computer technology and communication technology, as well as the popularization of the Internet, information security has received much attention of all fields. To ensure the information security, a large number of random numbers must be generated. It is well accepted that random numbers can be divided into physical random numbers and pseudo random numbers. The pseudo random numbers are mainly generated based on algorithms, which can be reproduced once the seed is decoded. The physical random numbers are extracted from physical entropies. While the bandwidth of the traditional physical entropy source is quite small, the bit rate of generated physical random numbers is limited. In the literature, a lot of methods have been proposed to produce high-quality and high-speed random number sequences with the chaotic entropy source, which exhibits wide bandwidth, large amplitude and random fluctuations. Usually, a semiconductor laser with optical feedback, i.e, an external-cavity semiconductor laser (ECSL), is chosen as a chaotic entropy source to generate a chaotic signal output. However, the chaotic signal output has a high time delay characteristic, which is not conducive to the production of high-quality random numbers. </sec><sec> In this paper, to produce high-quality chaos with time-delay signature (TDS) being well suppressed, we propose to employ an integration-oriented phased-array semiconductor laser to post-process the original chaos generated by an ECSL. It is shown that the proposed laser array is effective in TDS suppression, which improves the quality of optical chaos. After certain necessary post-processing, high-speed and high-quality random number sequences can be achieved. In this paper, we employ the conventional post-processing techniques, which include an 8-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for sampling and quantization, and m-bits least significant bit (m-LSB) and exclusive OR (XOR) for removing bias. The simulation results show that the random number sequences obtained from the chaotic entropy source comprised of an ECSL and phased-array semiconductor lasers have uniform distribution characteristic and their scatter diagram contains no obvious pattern. Meanwhile, the obtained random number sequences can pass all tests of the standard randomness benchmark, NIST SP 800-22. Additionally, based on the extensibility of phased-array semiconductor lasers, random number generators that can generate parallel random numbers are achievable. </sec>