Enhanced chaotic communication in VCSELs with variable-polarization optical feedback and polarization-preserved optical injection

The communication performance and security enhancement in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) subject to variable-polarization optical feedback (VPOF) are investigated numerically. Unidirectional polarization-preserved optical injection (PPOI) scheme is adopted, chaos modulation is utilized for message encryption, and two decoding methods are discussed and compared. The influences of VPOF on the performances of two decoding methods are focused on, and the effects of injection strength and frequency detuning are also considered. The security enhancement is further discussed by analyzing the robustness to mismatched feedback configuration and polarizer angle, as well as the intrinsic parameters. It is shown that, successful message encoding and decoding with Q-factors greater than 6 can be achieved by using unpredictability-enhanced chaotic carrier. In particular, the Q-factors are quite sensitive to the feedback configuration and laser parameters. When an attacker with open-loop is considered, Q-factors are smaller than 3 (6) for division (subtraction) decoding method. Specifically, even when an attacker with close-loop is considered, the Q-factors are lower than 6 when mismatched polarizer angles or intrinsic parameters exceed ±20% for subtraction method, and are more sensitive to parameter mismatch for division method, which enhances significantly the security, and thus is extremely useful for the security-enhanced chaotic communication system.