Published in

2008 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs

DOI: 10.1109/reconfig.2008.17

Hindawi, International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing, (2009), p. 1-8, 2009

DOI: 10.1155/2009/501672

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Analysis and Enhancement of Random Number Generator in FPGA Based on Oscillator Rings

Journal article published in 2008 by Wold Knut, Chik How Tan
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Originally published in International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing : http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijrc/ ; A true random number generator (TRNG) is an important component in cryptographic systems. Designing a fast and secure TRNG in an FPGA is a challenging task. In this paper, we analyze the TRNG designed by Sunar et al. (2007) based on XOR of the outputs of several oscillator rings. We propose an enhanced TRNG with better randomness characteristics that does not require postprocessing and passes the statistical tests. We have shown by experiment that the frequencies of the equal length oscillator rings in the TRNG are not identical. The difference is due to the placement of the inverters in the FPGA and the resulting routing between the inverters. We have implemented our proposed TRNG in an Altera Cyclone II FPGA. Our implementation has passed the NIST and DIEHARD statistical tests with a throughput of 100 Mbps and with a usage of less than 100 logic elements in the FPGA. The restart experiments have shown that the output from our TRNG behaves truly random and not pseudorandom.