Chaotic wavelength division multiplexing for optical communication

We demonstrate wavelength division multiplexing with chaotic subcarriers in two pairs of one-way-coupled Nd:YVO4 microchip lasers. Two individual digital messages are encoded on two chaotic carriers with different wavelengths in two transmitters by the chaotic masking method, and the mixed signals are sent to two receivers. Dual synchronization of chaos is used to obtain the original chaotic waveforms in the receivers. Two messages are decoded by filtering the difference of the laser outputs between the transmitter and the receiver by use of a low-pass filter for each pair of lasers. The message recovery can be achieved more easily when messages with small amplitude and low frequency are used.