It takes half the energy of a photon to send one bit reliably on the Poisson channel with feedback

2010/10/26 by Asoodeh, Shahab, Lapidoth, Amos, Wang, Ligong
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1010.5382

Abstract

We consider the transmission of a single bit over the continuous-time Poisson channel with noiseless feedback. We show that to send the bit reliably requires, on the average, half the energy of a photon. In the absence of peak-power constraints this holds irrespective of the intensity of the dark current. We also solve for the energy required to send log₂ M bits.

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