Ultrafast physical random bit generation from a chaotic oscillator with a silicon modulator

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Optoelectronics
• Information Security
• Nonlinear Dynamics

Background:

• Physical Random Bit (PRB) generation is crucial for secure communications.
• Chaotic optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) offer a promising route for high-speed PRB generation.
• Silicon photonics enables compact and integrated optoelectronic devices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate high-speed PRB generation using silicon-based chaotic OEOs.
• To investigate the use of Mach-Zehnder and microring resonator modulators for nonlinearity.
• To validate the randomness of the generated PRB sequences.

Main Methods:

• Utilized two chaotic OEOs incorporating silicon Mach-Zehnder and microring resonator modulators.
• Employed carrier-injection modulation and beam interference for OEO nonlinearity.
• Digitalized chaotic waveforms at 40 GS/s with 8-bit resolution and applied self-delay bitwise exclusive-or post-processing.

Main Results:

• Generated 320 Gbps physical random bit sequences.
• Verified the randomness of the PRB sequences using National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-22 statistical tests.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of silicon photonic circuits for chaotic OEOs.

Conclusions:

• Successfully generated high-quality physical random bits from silicon-based chaotic OEOs.
• The proposed method provides a robust approach for secure random number generation.
• Advancements in silicon photonics suggest potential for monolithic chaotic OEO chips for compact PRB generation.