Data transmission and storage assisted by noise

G.A. PATTERSON; P.I. FIERENS; G. BELLOMO; D.F. GROSZ

Avigliano Umbro (TR)

Workshop; Noise in dynamical systems at the micro and nanoscale; 2010

Noise in Physical System (NiPS) Laboratory

Electronic integration is driven by Moore's Law. Higher circuit densities lead to smaller signal-to-noise ratios and hence to a more prominent role of noise. Thus, the study of the nonlinear signal-noise interaction becomes relevant. The phenomenon of stochastic resonance has been studied in a large number of applications, ranging from biological and neurological systems to information storage and transmission sustained by noise. We built a transmission line which can only work in the presence of noise and investigated its performance. We found that the bit error rate is minimum for an optimum noise intensity. Performance degradation with "distance" was found to follow that of a linear system impaired by additive Gaussian noise. Moreover, we built one- and multi-bit storage devices based on Schmidt triggers and we found that information storage only occurs in the presence of noise. The study aims to encourage a line of research relevant to the implementation of CMOS in memory devices, or the advances of optical communication.