Ring Oscillator-Based High-Speed True Random Number Generator with a Minimal Footprint

Abstract

A fundamental component of every cryptographic system is a True random number generator. TRNG generates the security key with other applications in secure communication. In general, analog components, high-gain amplifiers, and analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are used in traditional TRNGs. Recently, many TRNGs have been published, but a few may be put into practice using field-programmable gate arrays. This manuscript presents a TRNG using the ring oscillator which can be easily implemented in FPGA, providing high randomness with good statistical results for requirements like area, speed, and power consumption. The proposed TRNG is tested in FPGA families in Vivado version 2018.3 design suite, XC7A100TCSG-1 (Artix 7). The Generated bit stream of TRNG passed all the NIST tests. Moreover, along with the application of a feedback style system, the robustness of a TRNG is explored, and the locking of the ring oscillator is protected. The proposed TRNG achieves 2500 Mbps throughput after a Lineal feedback Shift Register used as a post-processing Unit, which gives a speed 1.8 times faster than presented by other work done on FPGA-based TRNGs.