On the propagation of binary signals in damped mechanical systems of oscillators

Abstract

In the present work, we explore efficient ways to transmit binary information in discrete, semi-infinite chains of coupled oscillators using the process of nonlinear supratransmission. A previous work showed that such transmission is possible and, indeed, reliable under the idealistic condition when weak or no damping is present. In this paper, we study a more realistic case and propose the design of mechanical devices in order to avoid the loss of information, consisting on the linear concatenation of several such mechanical systems. Our results demonstrate that the loss of information can be minimized or avoided using such physical structures.