Yukihiro TADOKORO
Takaya YAMAZATO
Hiroya TANAKA
Shintaro ARAI
Yasuo NAKASHIMA
Shintaro HIRAOKA
Signal processing systems are often affected by noise. A linear filtering method is often applied to avoid its influence. However, in the framework of nonlinear phenomenon, namely, Stochastic resonance (SR), the noise has a positive role in system behavior; the system response, especially response to weak signals, is strongly enhanced by exploiting noise with nonlinear characteristics in the system. This unique feature has attracted interest in diverse fields, including biological systems, electron devices, and signal processing methods.
For developing future applications with SR in the telecommunication field, this survey article provides the fundamental aspects and recent progress of SR. We briefly describe the fundamental theory of SR, in addition to a review of the history and investigations. Based on our recent results, we provide a framework of a receiver for sub-threshold signal detection exploiting SR. The error rate analysis and capacity analysis characterize the performance, and an example of implementation should help future development. Further, the paper introduces multi-signal demodulation using a one-bit AD converter; exploiting noise reduces the demodulation error. Because the one-bit AD converter has recently been discussed for 5G systems, noise-enhanced systems should be forthcoming in the near future.
Again, we hope that the described framework should be helpful for future work focusing on SR applications. Let us note that the application of the SR is not applicable everywhere. Linear processing techniques always give better performance than those in nonlinear techniques with, for example, the SR. If nonlinear behavior is inevitable, it may be a challenge to employ the SR framework.
