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European Solid-State Device Research Conference

Monolithically integrated optical random pulse generator in high voltage CMOS technology

Abbas Khanmohammadi, Reinhard Enne, Michael Hofbauer, Horst Zimmermann

Published Sep 1, 2015• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A monolithically integrated optoelectronic device is realized in 0.35um high voltage CMOS technology. It consists of a ring shaped single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) around a Si-CMOS-LED to generate random events. The LED-emitted photons transmit through the short distance between the Si-LED and SPAD and some of them can be detected by the SPAD. In this device, time intervals between single-photon events are independent quantum random variables. Experimental results show an increase of more than a factor of three in the photon counting rate compared to earlier reported results.

DOI
10.1109/essderc.2015.7324732

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Optics Letters•Nov 5, 2024•0 citations
A monolithically integrated optoelectronic device is realized in 0.35um high voltage CMOS technology. It consists of a ring shaped single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) around a Si-CMOS-LED to generate random events. The LED-emitted photons transmit through the short distance between the Si-LED and SPAD and some of them can be detected by the SPAD. In this device, time intervals between single-photon events are independent quantum random variables. Experimental results show an increase of more than a factor of three in the photon counting rate compared to earlier reported results.
In this paper, a nondeterministic random number generator based on detection of the single photons emitted by an Si-CMOS-LED light source integrated for the first time on the detector chip is presented and experimentally demonstrated. We use a ring-shaped single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) around the Si-CMOS-LED fabricated in 0.35-μm HV-CMOS technology to generate random events. The time intervals between single-photon events are independent quantum random variables. A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) digitizes the time variables to the stream of random bits. Bias in the raw data due to the nonuniform distribution of the time intervals is removed by postprocessing in a special configuration of xor gates to improve the randomness of the generated random bits. The quantum random numbers in 1-Gb streams with bit generation rate of 1 Mb/s were directly delivered to a personal computer (PC) and passed all statistical tests from ENT, STS, and DIEHARD, as well as for more accuracy correlation and bias tests applied on these streams.
This work describes a monolithically integrated photonic quantum random number generator (QRNG) in0.35μ m0.35 \mu ~\mathrm{m}0.35μ mCMOS. This QRNG consists of a light-emitting diode inside a deep N-well, a ring single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), a fast cascoded active quenching and resetting circuit, and an analog evaluation circuit determining whether the random bit is a “0” or “1”. The random bits are created by comparison of two consecutive time intervals between photon detections using charging and discharging a capacitor with a constant current as well as a comparator. The time intervals can be in the range from 10 ns to10μ s10 \mu ~\mathrm{s}10μ s. With±3.3 V\pm 3.3 ~\mathrm{V}±3.3 Vsupply voltage, the power consumption of the complete circuits is between 1.1 mW and 4.55 mW depending on the LED emission and detection rate of the SPAD. After XOR-hashing, the NIST tests were passed.
Experimental demonstration of a quantum random number generator based on one single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detector, a T / ( T − t ) pulse-shaped laser, and an field-programmable gate array (FPGA) acquisition module is presented. An integrated laser driver drives an external laser diode at 670 nm wavelength, whereas the SPAD with a photon detection probability of 18.5% is integrated together with an active quenching-resetting circuit. The SPAD detector generates counts for the interarrival time (IAT) measurement system implemented in an FPGA, where the change of the IATs between consecutive pulses is used to derive a random bit stream. It is shown how the application of a pulse-shaped laser driver can increase the performance of the system as compared to the continuous-wave operation of the laser diode to achieve the maximum generation rate of 5 Mbps while using a single SPAD. The generated numbers pass all randomness tests of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Dieharder, and ENT test (pseudorandom number sequence test) suits.
The present paper shows possible ways to design monolithic Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs) in a standard CMOS technology. While all commercial QRNGs based on SPAD technology use an external light as main source of entropy, in the present implementation silicon-based photon sources are used. This approach allows the integration of monolithic QRNGs paving the way towards miniaturized and low-cost devices. Moreover, being the QRNG realized in a standard CMOS technology, in perspective, it can potentially be embedded in secure microprocessor. In the paper we show that the proposed approach is compact, produces a minimum event rate of about 1kHz, possibly extended in case of the implementation of multi-QRNGs working in parallel.
Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) are solid-state photo-detectors capable of detecting single photons by exploiting the avalanche effect that occurs in the breakdown of a p-n junction biased above breakdown voltage. By this effect, a SPAD translates an incoming photon to a macroscopic current pulse. These devices are currently used for building medical devices characterized by a very high time resolution. An appealing application of SPAD is to use them as a basic block for building the entropy source of true random number generators. In this paper we focus on such application, and we explore the design challenges behind the realization of a quantum random number generator based on a massively parallel array of SPADs. The matrix under investigation comprises 512×128 independent cells that convert photons onto a raw bit-stream, which, as ensured by the properties of quantum physics, is characterized by a very high level of randomness. The sequences are read out in a 128-bit parallel bus, concatenated, and pipelined onto a de-biasing filter. Subsequently, we fabricated the proposed chip using a standard CMOS process. Our results, achieved on the manufactured device and coupling two matrices, show that our architecture can reach up to 5 Gbit/s while consuming 25pJ/bit, thus demonstrating scalability and performance for any random number generators based on SPADs.
Quantum random number generators (QRNGs) can generate true random numbers and have significant applications in quantum communication, numerical computation, and model simulation. However, the rate of random number generation based on photon detection is constrained by the maximum count rate of a single-photon detector. Therefore, improving the efficiency of random number generation for individual photon detection events becomes an optional way to increase the rate of random number generation. In this paper, multidimensional photon detection is implemented to enhance single-photon detection events, thereby providing a new, to the best of our knowledge, technical development strategy for high-speed random number generators. The temporal and spatial coherence of coherent-state photons is utilized as a valuable quantum resource, enabling us to achieve the simultaneous extraction of time-space measurement collapsed randomness for single-photon detection events using a chip-scale CMOS-integrated single-photon avalanche diode array. The efficiency of random number generation for single-photon detection events is effectively improved. In our experiments, up to 20 bits can be extracted from an individual photon detection event, and the rate of random number generation reaches up to 2.067 Gbps.