Communication with a chaotic traveling wave tube microwave generator

Traveling wave tubes (TWTs) are vacuum electronic amplifiers (see Beck, Gittins, and Pierce) that are commonly used for communication in the centimeter wavelength range. Increasing demand for high data flow in wireless communication systems (satellite communication systems are a good example) raises needs for making TWT's more compact and efficient. Motivated by this we suggest a scheme in which a TWT with feedback is operated in a highly nonlinear regime where the device behaves chaotically. The chaos is controlled using small controls. Then, at the receiving end a receiving TWT synchronizes to the chaotic transmitter and amplifies the received signal with nearly no distortion. Results on numerical simulations of the proposed scheme are reported and used to evaluate its effectiveness. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.