3 ms·
Nothing special about the noise floor, it's just the point where you can only transmit around one bit per second per hertz
by batsigner 6y ago
Nothing special about the noise floor, it's just the point where you can only transmit around one bit per second per hertz
- giomasce 6y agoLink to the proof? Or at least, does the theorem has a well-known name?
- tripletao 6y agoThe Shannon–Hartley theorem. It assumes additive white Gaussian noise (which is a good model for most kinds of thermal-ish noise), and provides a bound on the channel capacity that practical codes closely approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...
- labawi 6y agoFrom an information-theoretic POV, yes, you can squeeze information from less, but the definition I found is based on signal levels not transmission capacity, and it seems to have other notable consequences. AFAICT it's around this point that you can't tell whether there is a transmission, unless you know what it looks like; tuning requires decoding and/or fancy math, not a spectrometer; communication works just fine (with proper transmission modes), but there are nontrivial practical consequences as you approach or go below the noise floor. I wouldn't expect to see analog equipment operating below the noise floor.