Secure Communication via Chaotic Synchronization Based on Reservoir Computing

Information security occupies a very important part of national security. Chaos communication can provide high-level physical layer security, but its harsh claims on the chaotic system parameters of the transmitter and the receiver resulting in reduced synchronization coefficient and more difficult consistent synchronization of point to multipoint networking. In this article, a chaotic synchronization and communication system based on reservoir computing (RC) has been proposed. In this scheme, the trained RC highly synchronized with the emitter acts as the receiver with simplified structure under the premise of ensuring safety. Simultaneously, the cross-prediction algorithm has been proposed to weaken the accumulation effect of prediction synchronization error of RC and facilitate the realization of long-term communication. Furthermore, the tolerance of the system performance to the signal-to-noise ratio with the variations of the mask coefficients has been investigated, and the optimal operation point under the condition of the adjustable number of nodes and leakage rate of RC has been numerically analyzed. The simulation results show that the normalized mean-square error of synchronization of 10−6 magnitude and the bit error rate of decryption at 10−8 level can be obtained. Finally, from the operational perspective, a 100-m short-distance experiment confirms that its communication performance is consistent with the simulation results. We strongly believe that the proposed system offers the opportunity of a new research direction in chaotic secure communications.