Abstract

Fast and reliable generation of non-deterministic random numbers is needed to improve the security of existing information and communication systems, including transactions on the internet and distributed data storage systems. Realising practical quantum key distribution systems in the future will also require high-speed generation of random sequences to modulate transmission parameters. Random physical phenomena, such as quantum optical noise and frequency jitter due to thermal noise in electronic oscillators, have been used as entropy sources for non-deterministic random number generation. However, rates of operation of non-deterministic generators have been limited to below around 10 Mbps, due to the difficulty of extracting bit sequences from physical noise at high rates without degrading statistical properties [1].

© 2009 IEEE