ABSTRACT
In recent decades a newly discovered phenomenon — chaos — attracted much attention among scientists from nonlinear dynamics. In the search for practical applications, communications systems were identified as one of the fields where chaos could turn out to be beneficial. This chapter discusses the application of chaotic signals and systems to communication problems. First, we shortly review the phenomenon of chaos, the properties of chaotic signals, and the means of their generation. Starting from the general communications system structure, the potential application fields of chaos in communications are identified. Then we introduce proposed methods for using chaos in modulation and coding and classify them based on the established point of views. Finally, the performance and usefulness of chaos are analyzed, discussed, and compared to those of the conventional approaches.
