A pseudo-matched filter for chaos

A matched filter maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio of a signal. In the recent work of Corron et al. [Chaos 20, 023123 (2010)], a matched filter is derived for the chaotic waveforms produced by a piecewise-linear system. This system produces a readily available binary symbolic dynamics that can be used to perform correlations in the presence of large amounts of noise using the matched filter. Motivated by these results, we describe a pseudo-matched filter, which operates similarly to the original matched filter. It consists of a notch filter followed by a first-order, low-pass filter. We compare quantitatively the matched filter's performance to that of our pseudo-matched filter using correlation functions. On average, the pseudo-matched filter performs with a correlation signal-to-noise ratio that is 2.0 dB below that of the matched filter. Our pseudo-matched filter, though somewhat inferior in comparison to the matched filter, is easily realizable at high speed (>1 GHz) for potential radar applications.