The paper explores the effect of random parameter switching in a fractional
order (FO) unified chaotic system which captures the dynamics of three popular
sub-classes of chaotic systems i.e. Lorenz, Lu and Chen's family of attractors.
The disappearance of chaos in such systems which rapidly switch from one family
to the other has been investigated here for the commensurate FO scenario. Our
simulation study show that a noise-like random variation in the key parameter
of the unified chaotic system along with a gradual decrease in the commensurate
FO is capable of suppressing the chaotic fluctuations much earlier than that
with the fixed parameter one. The chaotic time series produced by such random
parameter switching in nonlinear dynamical systems have been characterized
using the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE) and Shannon entropy. The effect of
choosing different simulation techniques for random parameter FO switched
chaotic systems have also been explored through two frequency domain and three
time domain methods. Such a noise-like random switching mechanism could be
useful for stabilization and control of chaotic oscillation in many real-world
applications.Comment: 31 pages, 17 figures, 5 Table