Generating pseudo-random numbers by combining two systems with complex behaviors

Cellular automata (CA) due to its complex behavior has several applications such as generating random numbers and cryptography. Because of the intrinsic self-organized property, a pure CA cannot produce a long sequence of random numbers. Non-uniform, controllable/programmable CA or a combination of several automata can be used to increase the length of a produced sequence of random numbers. In this paper, a non-uniform CA as a random number generator has been combined with Langton's ants in order to generate random numbers. Langton's ant is a simple discrete dynamical system, with a surprisingly complex behavior. The combination of some Langton's ants gives them a chaotic behavior and combination of this behavior with complex behavior of cellular automata causes a great efficiency in generating random sequences. Experimental results show that, results given by the combination of ants and CA does not depend on initial value and shows a random behavior, resulting in cycles with very long period lengths and a limited number of cells such that a cycle length of 23n is obtained by n cells. Moreover, some tests such as entropy, avalanche, diehard, NIST and several basic statistical tests have been performed and all of them have been successfully passed.