A Compact and Power-Efficient Noise Generator for Stochastic Simulations

This paper describes an adaptive noise generator circuit suitable for on-chip simulations of stochastic chemical kinetics. The circuit uses amplified BJT white noise and adaptive low-pass filtering to emulate the power spectrum and auto-correlation of random telegraph signals (RTS) with Poisson-distributed level transitions. A current-mode implementation in the IHP 0.25 mu m BiCMOS process shows excellent agreement with theoretical results from the Gillespie stochastic simulation algorithm over a 60 dB range in mean current levels (modeling molecule count numbers). The circuit has an estimated layout area of 0.01 mm(2) and typically consumes 100 mu A, which are 10x and 8x better, respectively, than prior implementations.