6. Hazard quality testing

Once we've seen how the main types of RNG work, we'll have a good understanding of the different evaluation requirements. For a PRNG, we will study its algorithm in order to provide a mathematical characterization of the quality of the hazard. This study is essential at the design stage, but is beyond the scope of this article. This a priori assessment alone is not sufficient.

We also need to check a posteriori that the implementation of the algorithm (totally theoretical) is correct. Statistical tests are often used for this purpose. In the case of a TRNG, when it is designed, we try to find a mathematical model characterizing the hazard. This requires a very good knowledge of electronic or physical modeling. This aspect goes far beyond the scope of this article. In practice, very few TRNG studies include detailed modelling of their hazard source. Finally, in the...