This book provides a summary of the research conducted at UCLA, Stanford University, and UCSD over the last ?ve years in the area of nonlinear dyn- ics and chaos as applied to digital communications. At ?rst blush, the term chaotic communications seems like an oxymoron; how could something as precise and deterministic as digital communications be chaotic? But as this book will demonstrate, the application of chaos and nonlinear dynamicstocommunicationsprovidesmanypromisingnewdirectionsinareas of coding, nonlinear optical communications, and ultra-wideband commu- cations. The eleven chapters of the book summarize many of the promising new approaches that have been developed, and point the way to new research directions in this ?eld. Digital communications techniques have been continuously developed and re?ned for the past ?fty years to the point where today they form the heart of a multi-hundred billion dollar per year industry employing hundreds of thousands of people on a worldwide basis. There is a continuing need for transmission and reception of digital signals at higher and higher data rates. There are a variety of physical limits that place an upper limit on these data rates, and so the question naturally arises: are there alternative communi- tion techniques that can overcome some of these limitations? Most digital communications today is carried out using electronic devices that are essentially linear, and linear system theory has been used to c- tinually re?ne their performance. In many cases, inherently nonlinear devices are linearized in order to achieve a certain level of linear system performance.

An Overview of Digital Communications Techniques Using Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics.- Digital Communication Using Self-Synchronizing Chaotic Pulse Position Modulation.- Spread Spectrum Communication with Chaotic Frequency Modulation.- Ultra-Wideband Communications Using Pseudo-Chaotic Time Hopping.- Optimum Spreading Sequences for Asynchronous CDMA System Based on Nonlinear Dynamical and Ergodic Theories.- Nonlinear Phenomena in Turbo Decoding Algorithms.- Security of Chaos-Based Communication and Encryption.- Random Finite Approximations of Chaotic Maps.- Numerical Methods for the Analysis of Dynamics and Synchronization of Stochastic Nonlinear Systems.- Dynamics and Synchronization of Semiconductor Lasers for Chaotic Optical Communications.- Performance of Synchronized Chaotic Optical Communication Systems.