A multi-level hybrid chaotic system with a novel damping approach to achieve variable rates

Recent advances in chaotic communications have paved the way for the implementation of matched filter based receivers to detect chaotic signals generated by hybrid-chaotic oscillators. These oscillators offer an exact analytic solution given their fixed basis function. This paper extends the hybrid-chaotic oscillator concept and presents a novel hybrid-chaotic oscillator for multilevel chaotic modulation. This is created by combining a data dependent discrete system and a continuous chaotic system with a novel damping factor approach to achieve variable rates. Lower complexity is achieved by multilevel modulation at the transmitter and a matched filter at the receiver. An exact analytic solution for the output of the matched filter was also derived. A comprehensive set of simulations were carried out to evaluate the performance of the novel system in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels and to compare it with that of conventional communication systems. The results demonstrate that the proposed system can realize multi-level chaotic communication system with acceptable bit error rate performance.