Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness
In this paper, we evaluate clock signals generated in ring oscillators and self-timed rings and the way their jitter can be transformed into random numbers. We show that counting the periods of the jittery clock signal produces random numbers of significantly better quality than the methods in whic...
Main Authors: | , , , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
2018-08-01
|
Series: | Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems |
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/7274 |
id |
doaj-6d81e1f22daf404badf57a34b61085f8 |
---|---|
record_format |
Article |
spelling |
doaj-6d81e1f22daf404badf57a34b61085f82020-11-25T02:06:04ZengRuhr-Universität BochumTransactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems2569-29252018-08-012018310.13154/tches.v2018.i3.214-242Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of RandomnessElie Noumon Allini0Maciej Skórski1Oto Petura2Florent Bernard3Marek Laban4Viktor Fischer5Hubert Curien Laboratory, University of LyonInstitute of Science and Technology (IST), KlosterneuburgHubert Curien Laboratory, University of LyonHubert Curien Laboratory, University of LyonDepartment of Electronics and Multimedia Communications, Technical University of Košice; Micronic A. S., BratislavaHubert Curien Laboratory, University of Lyon In this paper, we evaluate clock signals generated in ring oscillators and self-timed rings and the way their jitter can be transformed into random numbers. We show that counting the periods of the jittery clock signal produces random numbers of significantly better quality than the methods in which the jittery signal is simply sampled (the case in almost all current methods). Moreover, we use the counter values to characterize and continuously monitor the source of randomness. However, instead of using the widely used statistical variance, we propose to use Allan variance to do so. There are two main advantages: Allan variance is insensitive to low frequency noises such as flicker noise that are known to be autocorrelated and significantly less circuitry is required for its computation than that used to compute commonly used variance. We also show that it is essential to use a differential principle of randomness extraction from the jitter based on the use of two identical oscillators to avoid autocorrelations originating from external and internal global jitter sources and that this fact is valid for both kinds of rings. Last but not least, we propose a method of statistical testing based on high order Markov model to show the reduced dependencies when the proposed randomness extraction is applied. https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/7274Physical source of randomnessphysical RNGstochastic modelentropy |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Elie Noumon Allini Maciej Skórski Oto Petura Florent Bernard Marek Laban Viktor Fischer |
spellingShingle |
Elie Noumon Allini Maciej Skórski Oto Petura Florent Bernard Marek Laban Viktor Fischer Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems Physical source of randomness physical RNG stochastic model entropy |
author_facet |
Elie Noumon Allini Maciej Skórski Oto Petura Florent Bernard Marek Laban Viktor Fischer |
author_sort |
Elie Noumon Allini |
title |
Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness |
title_short |
Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness |
title_full |
Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness |
title_fullStr |
Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evaluation and Monitoring of Free Running Oscillators Serving as Source of Randomness |
title_sort |
evaluation and monitoring of free running oscillators serving as source of randomness |
publisher |
Ruhr-Universität Bochum |
series |
Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems |
issn |
2569-2925 |
publishDate |
2018-08-01 |
description |
In this paper, we evaluate clock signals generated in ring oscillators and self-timed rings and the way their jitter can be transformed into random numbers. We show that counting the periods of the jittery clock signal produces random numbers of significantly better quality than the methods in which the jittery signal is simply sampled (the case in almost all current methods). Moreover, we use the counter values to characterize and continuously monitor the source of randomness. However, instead of using the widely used statistical variance, we propose to use Allan variance to do so. There are two main advantages: Allan variance is insensitive to low frequency noises such as flicker noise that are known to be autocorrelated and significantly less circuitry is required for its computation than that used to compute commonly used variance. We also show that it is essential to use a differential principle of randomness extraction from the jitter based on the use of two identical oscillators to avoid autocorrelations originating from external and internal global jitter sources and that this fact is valid for both kinds of rings. Last but not least, we propose a method of statistical testing based on high order Markov model to show the reduced dependencies when the proposed randomness extraction is applied.
|
topic |
Physical source of randomness physical RNG stochastic model entropy |
url |
https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/7274 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT elienoumonallini evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness AT maciejskorski evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness AT otopetura evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness AT florentbernard evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness AT mareklaban evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness AT viktorfischer evaluationandmonitoringoffreerunningoscillatorsservingassourceofrandomness |
_version_ |
1724935331620323328 |