A high speed truly IC random number source for smart card microcontrollers

摘要

The design of a high speed IC random number source macro-cell, suitable to be integrated in a Smart Card microcontroller, is presented. The direct amplification of thermal noise is exploited and an accurate and low area demanding offset zeroing system has been developed in order to increase the statistical quality of the generated bit sequences. Using a 0.18 /spl mu/m n-well CMOS process, a prototype has been fabricated and measured, obtaining a random behavior for an output data rate up to 40 Mb/s.