Research Progress in Physical Random Number Generator Based on Laser Chaos for High-Speed Secure Communication

Abstract

Physical random numbers have great application value in the fields of cryptography, communication and national security. Conventional physical random number generators are limited by the low bandwidth of applied entropy sources such as thermal noise and thus have low bit rates at Mb/s order. With the appearance of wideband photonic entropy sources (e.g. chaotic laser and amplified spontaneous noise) in recent years, lots of schemes for high-speed random number generation are proposed. Among them, chaotic laser attracted many attentions due to its merits such as high bandwidth, large amplitude fluctuation and ease of integration. According to the international research situation, physical random number generation schemes based on chaotic laser are overviewed. Through analyzing their own advantages and disadvantages, current hot spots in the studies are summarized and some possible development orientations in the future are pointed out.