WDM-based bidirectional chaotic communication for semiconductor lasers system with time delay concealment

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM)-based chaos communication configuration allowing for the bidirectional exchange of information. In the scheme, the output of a master semiconductor laser (MSL), is injected into slave semiconductor lasers (SSLs), drives the chaotic synchronization of SSLs with optical feedback and electro-optical phase feedback. By calculating the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE), Lempel–Ziv complexity (LZC) and permutation entropy (PE), we find that the system can generate the chaotic signal with high complexity. We also demonstrate that the chaotic signal bandwidth obtained is as high as 24.68 GHz by selecting the suitable parameters; this configuration intrinsically conceals the electro-optical phase feedback time delay signature (TDS) and optical feedback TDS in transmitted variable; this delayed chaotic dynamics are identically synchronized when the parameters of emitter are exactly matched with that of receiver; while the external and internal parameters’ mismatch between emitter and receiver can lead to the decrease of the synchronization quality. In addition, the result reveals that the channel spacing has influence on cross-correlation coefficient (XCF) quantifying synchronization quality. At last, the messages introduced at two ends of the link can be successfully encrypted and decrypted, and we quantitatively analyze the corresponding Q-factor at different transmission rates.