Generation of Truly Random Numbers Using Si-NC LEDs

Generation of random numbers is absolutely vital in many applications particularly cryptography. Random numbers can be obtained using pseudo random number generators via deterministic algorithms whose unpredictability is not totally assured since when the initial value is revealed, all the bits in the sequence will be readily constructed. On the contrary, truly random numbers essentially need to be generated through physical non-deterministic processes. Considering the non-deterministic process of spontaneous emission of photons in silicon nanocrystal (Si-NC) LEDs, they can be employed to generate quantum random numbers. In our experimental setup the light emitted from the LED was detected by a single photon avalanche photodiode (SPAD) through a bundle of optical fibers and then by using a multichannel scaler (MCS) connected to a PC, sequences of bits were extracted. To evaluate the randomness of the bit sequences the NIST test suit was used. The generated bit sequences passed all the NIST tests by enforcing a dead time of length equal to the bin-width and half the bin-width. The quantum random number generator (QRNG) we produced enjoys the two main advantages of very negligible bias and simple setup with a bit-rate of 0.6Mbps which can be easily increased by adopting a parallel architecture and exploiting the CMOS compatibility of all components.

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