Detection of determinism and randomness in time series: A method based on phase space overlap of attractors

The space overlap of an attractor reconstructed from a time series with a similarly reconstructed attractor from a random series is shown to be a sensitive measure of determinism. Results for the time series for Henon, Lorenz and Rössler systems as well as a linear stochastic signal and an experimental ECG signal are reported. The overlap increases with increasing levels of added noise, as shown in the case of Henon attractor. Further, the overlap is shown to decrease as noise is reduced in the case of the ECG signal when subjected to singular value decomposition. The scaling behaviour of the overlap with bin size affords a reliable estimate of the fractal dimension of the attractor even with limited data.