With the rapid development of optical communications and the increasing amount of data exchanged, it has become utterly important to provide effective architectures to protect sensitive data. The use of chaotic optoelectronic devices has already demonstrated great potential in terms of additional computational security at the physical layer of the optical network. However, the determination of the security level and the lack of a multi-user framework are two hurdles which have prevented their deployment on a large scale. In this thesis, we propose to address these two issues. First, we investigate the security of a widely used chaotic generator, the external cavity semiconductor laser (ECSL). This is a time-delay system known for providing complex and high-dimensional chaos, but with a low level of security regarding the identification of its most critical parameter, the time delay. We perform a detailed analysis of the influence of the ECSL parameters to devise how higher levels of security can be achieved and provide a physical interpretation of their origin. Second, we devise new architectures to multiplex optical chaotic signals and realize multi-user communications at high bit rates. We propose two different approaches exploiting known chaotic optoelectronic devices. The first one uses mutually coupled ECSL and extends typical chaos-based encryption strategies, such as chaos-shift keying (CSK) and chaos modulation (CMo). The second one uses an electro-optical oscillator (EOO) with multiple delayed feedback loops and aims first at transposing coded-division multiple access (CDMA) and then at developing novel strategies of encryption and decryption, when the time-delays of each feedback loop are time- dependent.
