PUFKEY: A High-Security and High-Throughput Hardware True Random Number Generator for Sensor Networks

Random number generators (RNG) play an important role in many sensor network systems and applications, such as those requiring secure and robust communications. In this paper, we develop a high-security and high-throughput hardware true random number generator, called PUFKEY, which consists of two k...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dongfang Li, Zhaojun Lu, Xuecheng Zou, Zhenglin Liu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2015-10-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/15/10/26251
Description
Summary:Random number generators (RNG) play an important role in many sensor network systems and applications, such as those requiring secure and robust communications. In this paper, we develop a high-security and high-throughput hardware true random number generator, called PUFKEY, which consists of two kinds of physical unclonable function (PUF) elements. Combined with a conditioning algorithm, true random seeds are extracted from the noise on the start-up pattern of SRAM memories. These true random seeds contain full entropy. Then, the true random seeds are used as the input for a non-deterministic hardware RNG to generate a stream of true random bits with a throughput as high as 803 Mbps. The experimental results show that the bitstream generated by the proposed PUFKEY can pass all standard national institute of standards and technology (NIST) randomness tests and is resilient to a wide range of security attacks.
ISSN:1424-8220