SAC: G: 3-D Cellular Automata based PRNG

Random numbers are critical in many areas like security, simulation, gaming and even gambling. Random numbers are basically of two types: true random numbers and pseudorandom numbers. In this paper we propose a three dimensional cellular automata (3-D CA) based pseudo-random number generator (PRNG). Cellular Automata (CA) is used in pseudo-random number generators to produce high-rate random numbers. However, the randomness of such numbers directly depends upon the CA rules and the number of neighbor cells. The two-dimensional (2-D) CA have several limitations such as finding the best CA rules, boundary cell problems, etc. To address the problems existing in the 2-D CA, we propose a random number generator based on 3-D cellular automata. The proposed generator is based on the rule numbers 43, 85, 170 and 201, and on incremental boundary conditions. The output bits are then passed to the well-known Diehard, ENT and NIST test suites to test its randomness. The results reveal that the bit stream generated by the proposed scheme passes all the tests present in the test suites.