To design a hyperchaotic generator and apply chaos into secure communication, a linear unidirectional coupling control is applied to two identical simplified Lorenz systems. The dynamical evolution process of the coupled system is investigated with variations of the system parameter and coupling coefficients. Particularly, the influence of coupling strength on dynamics of the coupled system is analyzed in detail. The range of the coupling strength in which the coupled system can generate hyperchaos or realize synchronization is determined, including phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents, and Poincare section. And the critical value of the system parameter between hyperchaos and synchronization is also found with fixed coupled strength. In addition, abundant dynamical behaviors such as four-wing hyperchaotic, two-wing chaotic, single-wing coexisting attractors and periodic orbits are observed and chaos synchronization error curves are also drawn by varying system parameter c. Numerical simulations are implemented to verify the results of these investigations.
