Implementing a memristive Van der Pol oscillator coupled to a linear oscillator: synchronization and application to secure communication

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamics of a memristor-based Van der Pol oscillator coupled to a linear circuit (VDPCL). This chaotic oscillator is a modification of the classical Van der Pol coupled to a linear circuit, and is obtained by replacing the classical cubic nonlinearity by the memristive one. The memristive VDPCL oscillator, in addition to having a very special stability property, exhibits interesting spectral characteristics, which makes it suitable for chaos-based secure communication applications. The memristor is realized by using off-the-shelf components. The basic properties of the circuit are analyzed by means of bifurcation analysis. Chaotic attractors from numerical and experimental analysis are presented, followed by a comparison of results obtained from the modified VDPCL oscillator and those from the classical VDPCL oscillator. An application to synchronization and chaos secure communication is also presented.