Workshop on the Transmission of Chaotic Signals

University of Bristol, 1st - 3rd August 2006

Objectives

Chaotic signals have been considered as novel waveforms in applications including communications, radar, sonar and non-destructive testing. Their broadband nature or exploitation of their sensitive dependence on initial conditions are cited as reasons. This workshop brought together researchers to share knowledge on the application of chaotic signals to transmission systems. The workshop promoted cross-disciplinary fertilisation by providing attendees with the opportunity to share research experiences. Application engineers gained a better understanding of recent developments in dynamical systems theory, while theoretical researchers gained better appreciation of the application issues. Thus new directions in research were discussed and explored.

Background

Active Sensing and communications systems share the same configuration of a transmitter, a channel and a receiver. Each application has a different objective and thus emphasis on the different sub-systems:

Communications.

Information is encoded in the transmitted signal, and it is the purpose of the receiver to reliably recover this information. The channel distorts the signal, which is mitigated by robust encoding of the transmitted signal and receiver processing. Receiver processing often includes channel estimation (identification) followed by equalisation.

Radar/sonar.

The receiver detects reflections in the channel medium, including those from boundaries, and consequently estimates the location of the scatterers. The structure of returns can be used to separate returns into those from targets and clutter or reverberation. Fine detail in a target echo can be used for target recognition.

Non-destructive testing.

This operates in two different ways. The first is similar to radar/sonar, but classification is the primary goal, such that material properties and/or defects can be identified. In the second, the oscillatory modes of the sample are measured and analysed.

Although the applications are different, there are common processing stages, including (notably) channel identification and either feature extraction or equalisation processing.

This workshop brought together researchers from different applications, and theoretical researchers, in order to share knowledge and discuss application problems.

Workshop Sponsors

The workshop was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Global, SETsquared, and Qinetiq.