Secure analog communication system

Hanumant Singh Shekhawat, IITG

Communication is an essential part of our life. We have to often communicate with others for our
daily work. However, occasionally we would like to have a private conversation. We do not want a third
person to listen to a private conversation. In other words, we want to secure our communication. This is
commonly knowns as Secure commincation. It is easy to understand why we need secure communication
in the military. Similarly, we can list down many business and social applications also. In this project,
we develop a secure communication transmitter and receiver pair using electronics.
The fundamental idea of secure communication is shown in the following figure.
Masked Signal
Speech Signal Demasked
Signal

Channel

Masking Demasking
Signal Signal
Generator Generator

Figure 1: A basic secure communication system

In figure Figure , the speech signal generated by the microphone is not secure. Anyone with a proper
headset can listen to the original signal. However, if we add a masking signal to the original speech
signal, then no one in the channel can understand anything. To recover the original speech, we have to
demask the original speech before using our headphones.
Any masking scheme is worthless without the demasking scheme. However, the masking process
should make the speech signal unintelligible to an unauthorized listener. In this project, we do masking
using a chaotic signal generator. The same generator can be used for demasking also.
Chaotic signals are typically noiselike and difficult to predict. This property makes the chaotic
signal a good choice.
The chaotic signal generator can be implemented using a standard circuit typically made of opamps,
resistance and capacitors.