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Acta Physica Sinica

High-speed truly random number generator based on the random time distribution of single photons

Long Wang, Ma Hai-Qiang, Lihua Shen, Wei Ke-Jin

Published Jan 1, 2013• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we present a high-speed physical quantum random number generator using analog/digital converter (ADC), which is based on the random time distribution of single photons emitted by the stongly attenuated pulsed laser diode. With this scheme, the generation rate of random numbers can increase more than tenfold. A preliminary experiment consists of the time amplitude converter and 16 bit ADC, and the data generated by the system pass the pseudo-random number test program test standards. The experimental setup is efficient and robust against mechanical and temperature disturbances.

DOI
10.7498/aps.62.100303

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In this paper, we present a high-speed physical quantum random number generator using analog/digital converter (ADC), which is based on the random time distribution of single photons emitted by the stongly attenuated pulsed laser diode. With this scheme, the generation rate of random numbers can increase more than tenfold. A preliminary experiment consists of the time amplitude converter and 16 bit ADC, and the data generated by the system pass the pseudo-random number test program test standards. The experimental setup is efficient and robust against mechanical and temperature disturbances.
Aiming at the problem that the current Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) cannot simultaneously meet the high-speed and real-time requirements of random number generation in quantum key distribution communication, this paper improves the QRNG scheme based on pulse laser as light source to extract phase information. The random phase information is converted into light intensity information by single-mode Michelson interferometer, and then converted into electrical signal by high-speed Photo Detector (PD). Finally, the real-time quantum random number generation rate of 1.1 Gbit/s is obtained by using 16 bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with 250 MHz sampling rate and 50% extraction rate. A high-speed, real-time and integrated QRNG equipment is realized. At the same time, the advantages of this scheme and continuous laser as light source in principle and system design are compared. QRNG based on pulsed laser light source has passed various tests of China Academy of Information and Communications. The random number output by the product in the process of stable operation can pass 15 test standards specified in the State Cryptography Administration randomness test document GB/T 32915-2016 and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) test standards.
This paper proposes and demonstrates an optical quantum random number generator based on distribution of single photon pulse amplitude of a photomultiplier tube.The light emitted from ultraviolet LED is attenuated into discrete single photon sequence.After these photons are detected by the photomultiplier tube,the single-photon pulses with random distribution are output.Digital values of peaks of these single-photon pulses are used as the entropy sources of random number generation.In order to reduce the bias of the raw extracted random number,the SHA-256 post processing method based on FPGA is proposed and implemented.When our designed quantum random number generator works at a counting rate of 500kc/s,7random bits can be extracted on average per detected photon,and a random number generation rate of 3.5Mbit/s is obtained.The random bit sequences are tested by random number test programs ENT and STS.The test results show that the generated random bit sequences fully meet the standards of true random numbers.
Random numbers have great application value in the fields of secure communications, which are commonly used as secret keys to encrypt the information. To guarantee that the information is absolutely secure in the current high-speed communication, the applied random keys should possess a generation speed not less than the encrypted data rate, according to one-time pad theory found by Shannon (Shannon C E 1949 Bell.Syst.Tech.J. 28 656) Pseudo-random numbers generated by algorithm may easily reach a fast speed, but a certain periodicity makes them difficult to meet the aforementioned demand of information security. Utilizing physical stochastic phenomena can provide reliable random numbers, called physical random number generators (RNGs). However, limited by the bandwidth of the conventional physical sources such as electronic noise, frequency jitter of oscillator and quantum randomness, the traditional physical RNG has a generation speed at a level of Mb/s typically. Therefore, real-time and ultrafast physical random number generation is urgently required from the view of absolute security for high-speed communication today. With the advent of wideband photonic entropy sources, in recent years lots of schemes for high-speed random number generation are proposed. Among them, chaotic laser has received great attention due to its ultra-wide bandwidth and large random fluctuation of intensity. The real-time speed of physical RNG based on chaotic laser is now limited under 5 Gb/s, although the reported RNG claims that an ultrafast speed of Tb/s is possible in theory. The main issues that restrict the real-time speed of RNG based on chaotic laser are from two aspects. The first aspect is electrical jitter bottleneck confronted by the electrical analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Specifically, most of the methods of extracting random numbers are first to convert the chaotic laser into an electrical signal by a photo-detector, then use an electrical ADC driven by radio frequency (RF) clock to sample and quantify the chaotic signal in electronic domain. Unfortunately, the response rate of ADC is below Gb/s restricted by the aperture jitter (several picoseconds) of RF clock in the sample and hold circuit. The second aspect comes from the complex post-processes, which are fundamental in current RNG techniques to realize a good randomness. The strict synchronization among post-processing components (e.g., XOR gates, memory buffers, high-order difference) is controlled by an RF clock. Similarly, it is also an insurmountable obstacle to achieve an accurate synchronization due to the electronic jitter of the RF clock. In this paper, we propose a method of ultrafast multi-bit physical RNG based on chaotic laser without any post-process. In this method, a train of optical pulses generated by a GHz mode-locked laser with low temporal jitter at a level of fs is used as an optical sampling clock. The chaotic laser is sampled in the optical domain through a low switching energy and high-linearity terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (TOAD) sampler, which is a fiber loop with an asymmetrical nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier. Then, the peak amplitude of each sampled chaotic pulse is digitized by a multi-bit comparator (i.e., a multi-bit ADC without sample and hold circuit) and converted into random numbers directly. Specifically, a proof-of-principle experiment is executed to demonstrate the aforementioned proposed method. In this experiment, an optical feedback chaotic laser is used, which has a bandwidth of 6 GHz. Through setting a sampling rate to be 5 GSa/s and selecting 4 LSBs outputs of the 8-bit comparator, 20 Gb/s (=5 GSa/s4 LSBs) physical random number sequences are obtained. Considering the ultrafast response rate of TOAD sampler, the speed of random numbers generated by this method has the potential to reach several hundreds of Gb/s as long as the used chaotic laser has a sufficient bandwidth.
We demonstrate a novel high speed and multi-bit optical quantum random number generator by continuously measuring arrival time of photons with a common starting point. To obtain the unbiased and post-processing free random bits, the measured photon arrival time is converted into the sum of integral multiple of a fixed period and a phase time. Theoretical and experimental results show that the phase time is an independent and uniform random variable. A random bit extraction method by encoding the phase time is proposed. An experimental setup has been built and the unbiased random bit generation rate could reach 128 Mb/s, with random bit generation efficiency of 8 bits per detected photon. The random numbers passed all tests in the statistical test suite.
This paper proposes and demonstrates an optical quantum random number generator based on distribution of single photon pulse amplitude of a photomultiplier tube. The light emitted from ultraviolet LED is attenuated into discrete single photon sequence. After these photons are detected by the photomultiplier tube, the single-photon pulses with random distribution are output. Digital values of peaks of these single-photon pulses are used as the entropy sources of random number generation. In order to reduce the bias of the raw extracted random number, the SHA-256 post processing method based on FPGA is proposed and implemented. When our designed quantum random number generator works at a counting rate of 500 kc/s, 7 random bits can be extracted on average per detected photon, and a random number generation rate of 3.5 Mbit/s is obtained. The random bit sequences are tested by random number test programs ENT and STS. The test results show that the generated random bit sequences fully meet the standards of true random numbers. ©, 2015, Board of Optronics Lasers. All right reserved.