Coding information in the natural complexity of chaos

The complexity inherent in the dynamics of chaotic oscillators can be utilized to produce digital communication signals. Symbolic (digital) information is encoded in large-scale features of the waveform by use of small perturbations to control the symbolic dynamics. A digital signal can thus be produced directly at the transmission stage, with no need for subsequent amplification. Because tiny perturbations control the dynamics, the circuitry for controlling the oscillator could often be entirely microelectronic. We first illustrate the main idea using the Lorenz system, which has a particularly simple symbolic dynamics description. We then describe other aspects of this mechanism for information transmission in the context of a previous paper.