title: Digital key for chaos communication performing time delay concealment.
abstract: We introduce a scheme that integrates a digital key in a phase-chaos electro-optical delay system for optical chaos communications. A pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) is mixed within the chaotic dynamics in a way that a mutual concealment is performed; e.g., the time delay is hidden by the binary sequence, and the PRBS is also masked by the chaos. In addition to bridging the gap between algorithmic symmetric key cryptography and chaos-based analog encoding, the proposed approach is intended to benefit from the complex algebra mixing between a (pseudorandom) Boolean variable, and another continuous time (chaotic) variable. The scheme also provides a large flexibility allowing for easy reconfigurations to communicate securely at a high bit rate between different systems.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos, IFISC (CSIC-UIB), Campus Universitat de les Illes Balears, E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
authors.forename: Romain Modeste
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Nguimdo
authors.forename: Pere
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Colet
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Larger
authors.forename: Luís
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pesquera