Chaotic laser voltage: An electronic entropy source.

The chaotic terminal voltage dynamics of a semiconductor laser subjected to external optical feedback are utilized to directly generate electronic random number streams with minimal post-processing at rates of 40–120 Gb/s, thus obviating the need for optical-to-electrical conversion and facilitating integration with high-speed computers and devices. Furthermore, a comparison of the terminal voltage to the optical intensity being utilized as entropy sources is performed. It is shown that the voltage dynamics have an inherently larger entropy, a reduction in delay signature, and a more suitable distribution for generating random bit streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]