Signal dropout reconstruction in communicating with chaos

A chaotic system can be guided by tiny perturbations to follow a previously chosen path in phase space carrying a desired sequence of binary symbols. We discuss how to exploit redundancy and flexibility of the chaotic carrier s to reconstruct possible signal dropouts incurred in the communication cha nnel, even in the case in which the receiver has no information about the c haotic system on which the message is coded. A crucial issue is whether the natural evolution of the selected chaotic system displays prohibited seque nces. We show how to optimize the message recovering process, and how this last one is strictly related to the natural properties of the chaotic sourc es.