Performance of open-loop all-optical chaotic communication systems under strong injection condition

A numerical investigation of the performance of an open-loop optical chaotic communication system for the isochronous synchronization solution has been carried out, under strong optical injection conditions achieved using antireflective coating at the input facet of the receiver laser in combination with an optical erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). Different message encoding techniques have been considered and tested at multigigabit rates and for different levels of optical injection to the receiver. The effects induced by the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise of the EDFA to the performance of the chaotic communication system have also been studied. The performance of all the examined encryption methods for the 1 Gb/s bit-rate messages was quite satisfactory and was characterized by Q-factor values that exceeded 10, after synchronizing in the strong injection regime. For higher message bit rates, the Q-factor values for all methods decrease considerably due to the residual frequency components of the chaotic carrier that are now more significant in the message spectral region. The effect of the amplifier's ASE noise to the system's performance was deteriorated as long as the EDFA chaotic input was kept in relatively high power levels.