Design and implementation of a jerk circuit using a hybrid analog–digital system

Abstract The third order systems are very attractive because they present a rich dynamics and can be applied in secure communications, cryptography and so on. A special class of this kind of systems is the so-called jerk systems. This type of systems is very interesting in the field of research, because of its simplicity and ease of construction. In this work, the design and implementation of a jerk circuit using a hybrid analog–digital system is presented. This is done by means of a combination of analog circuits, which include op-amps configured as integrators, and electronic passive components; and digital circuits, as microcontrollers and DAC/ADC boards. The combination of these components takes the best of each analog/digital devices allowing simplification of the traditional analog jerk circuit and also a fast reconfiguration provided by the digital part. The obtained experimental results show that the proposed hybrid circuit can reproduce the dynamics of the jerk system.