This dissertation provides the conceptual development, modeling and simulation, physicalimplementation, and measured hardware results for a practicable digital coherent chaoticcommunication system. Such systems are highly desirable for robust communications due tothe maximal entropy signal characteristics that satisfy Shannon's ideal noise-like waveformand provide optimal data transmission across a flat communications channel. At the core ofthe coherent chaotic communications system is a fully digital chaotic circuit, providing anefficiently controllable mechanism that overcomes the traditional bottleneck of chaotic circuitstate synchronization. The analytical, simulation, and hardware results yield a generalization of direct sequence spread spectrum waveforms, that can be further extended to create a new class of maximal entropy waveforms suitable for optimized channel performance, maximal entropy transmission of chaotically spread amplitude modulated data constellations, andpermission-based multiple access systems.