Torch Technologies, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A11A-T002

Description

It has recently been mathematically proven that optimal communication systems necessarily have chaotic waveforms.Perhaps surprisingly, any communication system that utilizes a simple linear matched filter to achieve optimal detection of a signal, received by way of a noisy channel, must transmit a chaotic waveform.Using the concept of “exactly-solvable” chaos, communication systems can be built that offer simplicity, small size, low cost and spread spectrum features.To realize these benefits, three key chaos-theoretic advances are fused to comprise a communication system.The first is exactly-solvable chaos itself; a continuous/discrete-time hybrid linear circuit having a well-defined basis pulse.The second is Hayes encoding; a method for exploiting the famous “sensitivity to initial conditions” feature of chaos to encode a message signal onto a waveform to be transmitted.The third is the Corron-Blakely matched filter; a filter designed to optimally detect symbolic sequences encoded on a transmitted chaotic waveform.In our hands, this technology has evolved from purely theory to hardware prototypes that convincingly demonstrate the feasibility and realizability of such communication systems at radio frequencies.It is the purpose of this proposed effort to advance this technology towards applications-oriented examples, suitable for already-identified potential early adopters.