Sparse signal reconstruction based on experimental chaos generated by a laser diode

We demonstrate experimentally that optical chaos generated by a laser diode with optical feedback is suitable for compressive sensing of sparse signals. Specifically, we find that the coherence collapse regime guarantees that the generation of a sensing matrix, necessary for sparse reconstruction, has a comparable level of performance to those constructed with Gaussian random sequences. Our result opens new avenues for the use of optical chaotic devices for signal processing applications at ultra-high speed.