IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
Discrete chaotic systems based on memristors exhibit excellent dynamical properties and are more straightforward to implement in hardware, making them highly suitable for generating cryptographic keystreams. However, most existing memristor-based chaotic systems rely on a single memristor. This paper introduces a novel discrete chaotic system employing dual memristors, named the 3D memristive cubic map with dual discrete memristors (3D-MCM). The 3D-MCM system demonstrates richer and more intricate dynamical behaviors compared to its single-memristor counterparts, as verified through bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponent spectra, and complexity analyses. Notably, the system exhibits coexisting attractors, substantially enhancing its dynamical complexity. Hardware implementation of the 3D-MCM attractors confirms its feasibility for industrial applications. To illustrate the system's potential in encryption tasks, this study integrates the quaternary-based permutation and dynamic emanating diffusion (QPDED-IE) scheme for image encryption with the 3D-MCM.Experimental results demonstrate that the QPDED-IE scheme based on the 3D-MCM exhibits strong diffusion and confusion properties, effectively resisting cryptanalytic attacks.