Design and Investigation of Prime Length Non-Identical Entropy Source for True Random Sequence Generation Using CMOS 180nm Technology

Random numbers influence many applications such as statistical sampling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. Still, random numbers are almost inseparable from cryptographic algorithms, especially symmetric key algorithms, as keys are expected to be completely random. Random number generator (RNG) circuits need to have some randomized component so that the logic is not detected. Due to the complexities and difficulties of the design of true random number generators (TRNG), pseudo-random number generators (PRNG) are frequently used in these applications, though with some reluctance. Hence, there is a need for optimization between the true randomness of the generated bits and the complexity of the TRNG. Literature has many proposals for TRNG. Ring oscillator (RO) based TRNG is accepted as one of the widely used designs of TRNG since it has less complexity, simple conceptuality and the nature of a good entropy source. This research proposes a prime-length non-identical ring oscillator, and the design is investigated using CMOS 180nm technology. The proposed architecture has 114 transistors, and the entropy source has only 52. The harvesting mechanism uses XOR correction to extract the randomness effectively. The proposed design consumes the maximum power of 403.2 mW with an operating frequency of 1.789 GHz.