| | 1 | = Sources of Randomness = |
| | 2 | |
| | 3 | There are many physical sources of randomness and each have their own advantages and disadvantages. On this page I will explore some of these issues as a step in the design of this project. At the moment I see two primary methods for potential use by HWRNG: |
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| | 5 | * Electrical (thermal) noise generated in a resistor or semi-conductor device. |
| | 6 | * Ambient radioactivity or perhaps cosmic rays. |
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| | 8 | Right now I'm inclined to go with a solution involving electrical noise. However, noise sources are not usually as random as one might think and require some kind of correction or compensation to become high quality random sources. |
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| | 10 | Radioactive sources emit particles randomly based on a fundamental quantum mechanical process. They may require less correction than a noise generator would. However, I do not wish to include a radioactive source inside the Generator component of this project. Yet ambient radioactivity is always present and could perhaps be tapped as a random information source. |
