Fast Random Number Generation With Bandwidth-Enhanced Chaotic Semiconductor Lasers at 8$\,\times\,$50 Gb/s

Abstract

We propose a scheme for fast random number generation with bandwidth-enhanced chaotic semiconductor lasers. Chaotic laser intensity output and its time-delayed signal are sampled at 50 GigaSample per second and converted into eight-bit values. The order of the eight-bit samples of the time-delayed signal is reversed, and bitwise exclusive-or operation is executed between the bit-order-reversed samples and the original eight-bit samples. With this method, it is not necessary to eliminate any of the bits in eight-bit samples in order to obtain good-quality random bit sequences. The equivalent generation rate of 8×50 Gb/s is achieved in an experiment using bandwidth-enhanced chaotic semiconductor lasers.