A generalized multilevel-hybrid chaotic oscillator for low-cost and power-efficient short-range chaotic communication systems

In this paper, we present and evaluate a novel multilevel hybrid-chaotic oscillator. The proposed generalized multilevel-hybrid chaotic oscillator (GM-HCO) was created by combining a multilevel discrete function generated from user data with a continuous function having a damping factor greater than ln(2) to achieve variable rates and adaptive carrier frequencies. Improved spectral efficiency and lower complexity of the transceiver compared with differentially coherent systems were achieved by multilevel signals at the transmitter and a matched filter at the receiver. An exact analytical solution for the generalized fixed basis function and the impulse response of the matched filter were also derived. The bit error rate (BER) expression of the GM-HCO was derived for two levels. It was found that the noise performance of the proposed system was better than a hybrid chaotic system based on forward time and differential chaos shift keying (DCSK). A comprehensive set of simulations were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed system with chaotic communication systems in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The performance of the proposed system was comparable with that of conventional communication systems. The results demonstrate that the proposed system can offer better noise performance than existing chaotic communication systems, and it also offers variable transmitter frequencies and improved spectral efficiency. Noise-like behavior of the chaotic signals provides an additional layer of security at the physical layer compared with conventional (sinusoidal) communication systems.