An electronic technique for measuring phase space dimension from chaotic time series

Abstract An instrument for determining the number of independent variables involved in chaotic dynamical systems is described. The elaborated technique allows to obtain this measure in real time from a single observable. It has been used for the quantitative characterization of strange attractors underlying chaotic oscillations in anumber of nonlinear electronic circuits. This technique is found to be fairly insensitive to stochastic noise inherent in real experimental systems.