Exploiting metastability and thermal noise to build a re-configurable hardware random number generator

Abstract

While pseudo random number generators based on computational complexity are widely used for most of cryptographic applications and probabilistic simulations, the generation of true random numbers based on physical randomness is required to guarantee the advanced security of cryptographic systems. In this paper we present a method to exploit manufacturing variations, metastablity, and thermal noise in integrated circuits to generate random numbers. This metastability based physical random number generator provides a compact and low-power solution which can be fabricated using standard IC manufacturing processes. Test-chips were fabricated in TSMC 0.18um process and experimental results show that the generated random bits pass standard randomness tests successfully. The operation ofthe proposed scheme is robust against environmental changes since it can be re-calibrated to new environmental conditions such as temperature and power supply voltage.