Stability of Characteristics of Physical Random Number Generators

Abstract

The development of technologies leads to the need of revising the methods used to obtain cryptographic keys. The randomness parameters of sequences generated by physical random sequence generators are affected by the physical parameters of the recording equipment and the environment. The requirements for the randomness of the sequence, when passing the binary test, are obtained. It is shown that as the sequence length increases, the requirements for possible deviations from the equiprobable distribution of 0 and 1 increase. The randomness stability of the sequences generated by the generator based on the study of photons is estimated. The oscillator under study consists of an LED and a compact silicon photomultiplier designed to detect low-power light radiation. Possible physical processes leading to the deterioration of the randomness of sequences are shown. The possibility of using a generator of random numerical sequences based on a small-sized silicon photomultiplier for cryptographic purposes is estimated.

Keywords

• random binary sequence
• random number generator
• silicon photomultiplier
• test reliability
• binary test
• cryptographic key