I'm facing the problem of implementing pseudo random bit generator (PRBG) on a very low power device. NIST.SP800-22 "Statistical test suite for Pseudo Random Generators" suggests a suite of 15 tests for randomness.
- Is there a way to use those tests as "randomness measures" except from pass / fail?
That is, suppose you want to do changes in your random generator, and to measure, whether you improved the randomness or not. The NIST suite suggests a way to decide whether you are random or not, but its hard to extract the information of "improvement": For two different algorithms, it may happen that for some tests the first gives higher p-value, for other tests the same PRBG gives lower p values, although both pass all tests. So'
- is there some "measure of amount of randomness" test, or or how can NIST tests turn to be such?