Self-Reproducing Hidden Attractors in Fractional-Order Chaotic Systems Using Affine Transformations

This article proposes a unified approach for hidden attractors control in fractional-order chaotic systems. Hidden attractors have small basins of attractions and are very sensitive to initial conditions and parameters. That is, they can be easily drifted from chaotic behavior into another type of dynamics, which is not suitable for encryption applications that require quite wide initial conditions and parameters ranges for encryption key design. Hence, a systematic coordinate affine transformation framework is utilized to construct transformed systems with self-reproducing attractors. Simulation results of two three-dimensional fractional-order chaotic systems with hidden attractors validate that the proposed framework supports attractors geometric structure design and multi-wing generation. Hidden attractor size, polarity, phase, shape and position control while preserving the chaotic dynamics is indicated by strange attractors, spectral entropy, maximum Lyapunov exponent and bifurcation diagrams. Simulations demonstrate the capability of multi-wing generation from fractional-order hidden attractors with no equilibria using non-autonomous parameters as opposed to the classical equilibria extension techniques suitable only for self-excited attractors. The self-reproduced multiple wings can share the same center point or be distributed along an arbitrary line, curve or surface thanks to the non-autonomous translation parameters. Multi-wing attractors widen the basin of attraction and enlarge the state space volume. For practical applications, the proposed technique makes fractional-order systems with hidden attractors suitable for circuit implementations that require specific signal level and polarity conditions. In addition, for digital encryption applications, the relatively wide range of the extra parameters enhances the key space and hence the robustness against brute force attacks.