Journal of the
Korean Mathematical Society JKMS

Shannon entropy is one of the widely used randomness measures especially for cryptographic applications. However, the conventional entropy tests are less sensitive to the inter-bit dependency in random samples. In this paper, we propose new online randomness test schemes for true random number generators (TRNGs) based on the mutual information between consecutive $k$-bit output blocks for testing of inter-bit dependency in random samples. By estimating the block entropies of distinct lengths at the same time, it is possible to measure the mutual information, which is closely related to the amount of the statistical dependency between two consecutive data blocks. In addition, we propose a new estimation method for entropies, which accumulates intermediate values of the number of frequencies. The proposed method can estimate entropy with less samples than Maurer-Coron type entropy test can. By numerical simulations, it is shown that the new proposed scheme can be used as a reliable online entropy estimator for TRNGs used by cryptographic modules.

Keywords: online test, TRNG, random number generation, statistical test, Shannon entropy, mutual information

MSC numbers: Primary 94A60; Secondary 11K45