IET Optoelectronics

Research Article

Chaos synchronisation of electro-optical

chaotic systems with partially different
parameters

ISSN 1751-8768
Received on 16th April 2015
Revised on 28th July 2015
Accepted on 10th August 2015
doi: 10.1049/iet-opt.2015.0039
www.ietdl.org

Xiao Feng Chen 1,2, Han Ping Hu 1, 2

1

School of Automation, Hua Zhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, Peoples Republic of China
Key Laboratory of Image Processing and Intelligent Control of Education Ministry, Wuhan 430074, Peoples Republic of China
E-mail: huhust12@163.com

Abstract: The authors proposed a chaos synchronisation method for electro-optical chaotic systems with partially different
system parameters. This synchronisation method can not only effectively improve the robustness of synchronisation but
also ensure transmission security. According to the Lyapunov stability theorem, the authors analysed the chaos
synchronisation between two electro-optical chaotic systems with partially different system parameters, and provided
sufficient conditions to realise stable zero-lag chaos synchronisation. The authors also designed simple and realisable
adaptive control functions that met the sufficient conditions. Finally, the chaos synchronisation of electro-optical
chaotic systems with partially different system parameters was numerically investigated. The results showed that the
adaptive control functions can greatly improve the synchronisation performance in such a senderreceiver setup. The
numerical results were highly consistent with theoretical results.

Introduction

Chaos is a kind of widespread non-linear phenomenon in nature. In

recent years, chaos-based optical secure communication based on
semi-conductor laser (SL) systems [15] and electro-optical
systems [610] has been an important topic in the eld of secure
communication. The basic idea of chaos-based optical secure
communication is that a sender system uses an optical chaotic
carrier to encrypt the transmitted signal, and a receiver system
utilises the chaotic signal that is synchronised with the senders
chaotic signal to decode the transmitted signal [11]. The
usefulness of chaos for applications has changed signicantly
thanks to the pioneering work of Pecora and Carol in 1990 [12],
who succeeded in synchronising two chaotic systems, and
proposed a synchronisation method called master-slave
synchronisation. From then on, a lot of studies on chaos
synchronisation have been carried out [1315]. Specically, a
practical experiment of chaos-based optical secure communication
based on SL systems and electro-optical chaotic systems was
demonstrated over commercial bre-optic links in the metropolitan
area network of Athens [16].
A key issue in chaos-based optical communication scheme is the
inverse relationship between the robustness of chaos synchronisation
and transmission security [17]. On one hand, the security of chaos
communication relies on the symmetry of the system parameters of
sender and receiver systems, which need to completely match to
achieve high quality synchronisation [17]. On the other hand, an
acceptable bit error rate (BER) is required to ensure effective
communication. However, a signicant increase of BER can occur
due to the unavoidable mismatches in system parameters during
operation [18]. The tiny mismatches of system parameters
unavoidably lead to sustained deviations from the perfect
synchronisation manifold. This phenomenon seriously hinders the
practical application of chaos-based optical secure communication
technology. Kouomou et al. [9] analysed the inuence of
parameter mismatches between sender and receiver systems on the
BER of an electro-optical chaos communication scheme. Li et al.
[19] used an injection-locking mode to analyse the mismatch
robustness of chaos synchronisation. Based on injection-locking,
chaos synchronisation can still be achieved, even when large
parameter mismatches exist. However, the type of the

IET Optoelectron., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, pp. 8993

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

synchronisation is generalised synchronisation, which is

inappropriate for communication applications with relatively high
security requirements [19].
From the points of view of the robustness of chaos
synchronisation and transmission security, in this paper, we
propose a synchronisation method for electro-optical chaotic
systems with partially different system parameters. This
synchronisation method can not only effectively improve the
robustness of synchronisation but also ensure transmission
security. According to the Lyapunov stability theorem, we
analysed the chaos synchronisation between two electro-optical
chaotic systems with partially different system parameters, and
provided sufcient conditions to realise stable zero-lag chaos
synchronisation. We also designed simple and realisable adaptive
control functions that met the sufcient conditions. Finally, the
chaos synchronisation of electro-optical chaotic systems with
partially different system parameters was numerically investigated.
The results showed that the adaptive control functions can greatly
improve the synchronisation performance in such a sender
receiver setup. Our numerical results were highly consistent with
theoretical results.

Mathematical models

The electro-optical chaotic system is one of the most practical

representations of high-dimensional hyper chaotic systems when
the feedback gain is large enough [20]. The structure of an
electro-optical system is shown in Fig. 1. The electro-optical
system generally consists of a CW distributed feedback
semi-conductor, a MachZehnder (MZ) modulator, an optical bre
delay line, a photoreceiver, and a radio-frequency (RF) amplier.
The CW distributed feedback SL of power P feeds the MZ
modulator with the wavelength l = 2c/0 = 1.55 m. The MZ
modulator is characterised by RF and direct-current (DC)
half-wave voltages of VRF and VDC, respectively, and biased
electrically with a constant voltage (VB) on the DC electrode. Its
output satises Pincos 2[V(t)/2VRF + VB/2VDC]. The output
optical signal from the MZ modulator passes through an optical
delay line of delay TD, and the light is later converted into
electrical signals by a photoreceiver with conversion factor S. The

89

Mathematical proof

Denition 1: (Complete synchronisation). Consider two dynamic

systems that satisfy the following conditions
x = F(x), x [ Rn

y = F(y), y [ Rn

x(0) = y(0),



If j = lim x(t) y(t) = 0 when t , then the two dynamic
t1
systems achieve complete synchronisation.
Theorem 1: (the Lyapunov stability theorem). Consider a system,
x = f (x), x [ Rn , with an equilibrium point of x = 0: if there exists a
continuous scalar Lyapunov-candidate-function V(x), such that V(x)
is locally positive denite and the time derivative of V(x) is locally
negative denite, then the equilibrium point (x = 0) is
asymptotically stable.

Fig. 1 Experimental setup of an electro-optical chaotic system

electrical signal is then amplied with gain G by a RF amplier and

ltered with low and high cut-off frequencies, fL and fH, respectively.
The ltered voltage, V(t), is used to drive the MZ modulator.
The dynamics of an electro-optical chaotic system can be
described by a delay differential equation in terms of the
dimensionless variable x(t) = V(t)/2 VRF as follows [21]

x+t

dx 1 t
+ x(s)
dt u t0

ds = bcos2 [x(t TD ) + w]

x (t) = x(t) 1y(t) + bcos2 [x(t T ) + f]

y (t) = x(t)

x 1 (t) = x1 (t) 1y1 (t) + b1 cos2 [x1 (t T1 ) + f1 ] + u1 (t)

y 1 (t) = x1 (t)

y 1 (t) = y1 (t) 1y1 (t) + b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ] + u1 (t)

y 2 (t) = y2 (t) 1y2 (t) + b2 cos2 [y2 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u2 (t)

(3)

e(t) = y1 (t) y2 (t)

x 2 (t) = x2 (t) 1y2 (t) + b2 cos [x1 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u2 (t)

y 2 (t) = x2 (t)
2

(6)

The differential equation for the error variable can be obtained from
(5)
e (t) = e(t) 1e(t) + b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ]
b2 cos2 [y2 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u1 (t) u2 (t)

(7)

The Lyapunov-candidate-function is constructed as follows

1
1
V (e) = e 2 + 1e2
2
2

(8)

where is the dimensionless parameter of the system that satises

> 0. Clearly,V(e) > 0 and V (e) = 0 only when e = 0.
Taking the time derivative of V(e) and substituting (7) into the
expression of V (e)
V (e) = e e + 1ee
= e2 + e (b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ]

(9)

b2 cos [y1 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u1 (t) + u2 (t))

2

Theorem 2: The error system e(t) is asymptotically stable when

control functions ui (t) meet the following conditions


(5)

The error variable between sender and receiver systems is dened as

follows

(2)

where the overdot denotes the derivative relative to the

dimensionless time t/t. The new dimensionless parameter is
determined by the low and high cut-off times of the RF amplier.
In consideration of security, we assumed that the system parameter
was the same for sender and receiver systems.
A mathematical model of sender and receiver electro-optical
chaotic systems with partially different system parameters can be
modelled by following equations


(1)

where t = 1/2fH is the high cut-off time, = 1/2fL is the low cut-off
time, j = VB/2 VDC is the offset phase, and = k SGP/2 VRF is
the feedback gain of feedback loop, which depends on the overall
attenuation
t of the feedback loop, k. If we introduce the variable
y = 1/t t x(s)ds and the dimensionless time t/t, then (1) can be
0
rewritten as [22]


Equation (3) and (4) can be rewritten as expressions only containing

variable y

b1 + u1 (t) u2 (t) , 0 e . 0
b2 + u1 (t) u2 (t) . 0 e , 0

(10)

(4)
Proof: When e . 0,

where the subscript 1and 2 represent sender and receiver systems,

respectively, xi (t) and yi (t) are system state variables, and ui (t) is
an undetermined control function. From the perspectives of theory
and numerical simulation, we discuss how to set reasonable
control functions to realise synchronisation between two
electro-optical chaotic systems with partially different system
parameters in the following chapter.

V (e) = e2 + e (b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ]

b2 cos2 [y1 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u1 (t) u2 (t))

(11)

, e 2 + e (b1 + u1 (t) u2 (t))

,0

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

and when e , 0,

chaos synchronisation performance

b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ] b2 cos2 [y2 (t T2 ) + f2 ]

+ u1 (t) u2 (t) . b2 + u1 (t) u2 (t)

(12)

V (e) = e2 + e (b1 cos2 [y1 (t T1 ) + f1 ]

b2 cos2 [y2 (t T2 ) + f2 ] + u1 (t) u2 (t))
,0

(13)

In conclusion, according to the Lyapunov stability theorem, the error

system e(t) is asymptotically stable when control functions ui (t)
satisfy (10). Namely, sender and receiver systems realise complete
synchronisation according to the denition of complete
synchronisation.
On the basis of Theorem 2, we designed simple adaptive control
functions satisfying (10) that are easy to implement using a DSP
board [23, 24].

u1 (t) =

b1 (x1 x2 ),
b2 (x1 x2 ),

x1 x2 . 0
x1 x2 , 0

u2 (t) = 0

(14)
(15)

Numerical simulation

Practical parameter value accessible experimentally of j is covering

easily the full -periodicity. For , it is usually limited to a few units
(typ. 5) in the case of an electro-optic setup [25]. The dynamical
behaviour of an electro-optical system is chaotic when 3.5
[22]. The delay time is determined by the length of the optical
delay line.
For numerical simulation, the sender system parameters are set to
1 = 5e 6, T1 = 1.2e3, 1 = 4, f1 = /4, x1(0) = 3, and y1(0) = 1,
and the receiver system parameters are set to 2 = 5e 6, T2 = 2e3,
2 = 4.5, f1 = /5, x1(0) = 2, and y1(0) = 2. We dened a
synchronisation error variable ((t)) as follows to measure the


[x(t) y(t)]2
s(t) =
x(t)2

(16)

(t) is always greater than zero, and the closer (t) is to 0, the better
the performance of synchronisation is. When (t) = 0, two chaotic
systems have achieved complete synchronisation.
The synchronisation error without and with simple adaptive
control functions is shown in Fig. 2. Without the simple adaptive
control functions we designed as (14) and (15), the
synchronisation error was huge and not convergent (Fig. 2.a).
Furthermore, the synchronisation error was much closer to zero
with control (Fig. 2. b). The simple adaptive control functions we
designed greatly improved the synchronisation performance of
electro-optical chaotic systems with partially different system
parameters (the value of synchronisation error was reduced by
eight orders of magnitude). It is worth noting that the numerical
results are slightly different than the theoretical proof: the
synchronisation error with adaptive control was zero. This is
because we used MATLAB to do the numerical simulation, and
the relative tolerance of error of MATLAB is set to 104. With a
lower error relative tolerance, the synchronisation error with
adaptive control is closer to zero.
To verify the validity and universality of the adaptive
synchronisation method, numerical simulations of three groups of
chaotic systems with partially different system parameters were
done to measure the synchronisation performance. The relative
tolerance of error was set to 105 this time. The specic system
parameters are shown in Table1.
Fig. 3 shows the synchronisation performance of three groups of
chaotic systems with partially different system parameters. In
Fig. 3, the red (top), green (middle), and purple (bottom) curves
represent the synchronisation performance of the rst group,
second group, and third group of system parameters in Table 1,
respectively. As can be seen, well synchronisation performance
can be achieved under the three groups of chaotic systems with
partially different parameters.
The simple adaptive control functions we designed are related to
system parameters and the chaos synchronisation is sensitive to
the system parameter e. If an attacker does not know the system

Fig. 2 Synchronisation error without and with simple adaptive control functions
a Synchronisation error of chaotic systems without simple adaptive control functions
b Synchronisation error of chaotic systems with simple adaptive control functions

IET Optoelectron., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, pp. 8993

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

91

Fig. 3 Synchronisation performances of three groups of chaotic systems with partially different parameters

Table 1 Specific system parameters of three groups of chaotic systems

1
2
3

sender
receiver
sender
receiver
sender
receiver

T/ns

Initial value

3.5
4.1
4.2
3.7
4.4
4.1

30
35
40
35
30
25

/4
/3
/4
/5
/3
/4

x(0) = 1
x(0) = 3
x(0) = 2
x(0) = 5.1
x(0) = 1.3
x(0) = 5.5

parameters and e, he or she cannot attack the chaotic systems

successfully.

Conclusion

From the two points of view of the robustness of chaos

synchronisation and transmission security, we propose a
synchronisation method for electro-optical chaotic systems with
partially different system parameters. This synchronisation method
can not only effectively improve the robustness of synchronisation
but also ensure transmission security. We provided sufcient
conditions to realise stable zero-lag chaos synchronisation between
two electro-optical chaotic systems according to Lyapunov
stability theorem, and designed simple and realisable control
functions that met the sufcient conditions. The control functions
we designed are related to system parameter , and the chaos
synchronisation is sensitive to the system parameter e. If the
attacker does not know these system parameters, he or she cannot
successfully attack the chaotic system. What is more, chaos
synchronisation between electro-optical chaotic systems with
partially different system parameters was numerically investigated.
The results showed that the simple and realisable control functions
can greatly improve the synchronisation performance of such a
senderreceiver setup (the value of synchronisation error was
reduced by eight orders of magnitude with control when the
relative tolerance of error was set to 104). At last, to verify the
validity and universality of the synchronisation method, we
numerically simulated the synchronisation performance of three
groups of chaotic systems with partially different system
parameters. High quality chaos synchronisation was observed in

all situations. The numerical results were highly consistent with

theoretical results when the relative error tolerance of simulation
was set to below 105.

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