Abstract
Stochastic resonance (SR) is a nonlinear phenomenon that, under certain conditions, can enhance system response by adding noise to the signals of some nonlinear system. A particular advantage of SR over conventional linear systems is that it is able to detect subthreshold signals that linear systems hardly sense. Unfortunately, most research of SR in wireless communication systems has focused on fundamental analysis, leaving work to be done in experimental SR research despite the attractiveness of its application. Few attempts have so far addressed the development of SR receivers to show the feasibility of subthreshold signal detection. Those receivers that have been developed are simple ones specially made to confirm the usefulness of SR without needing to support state-of-the-art wireless radio technology. The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of using an SR receiver to receive subthreshold radio frequency (RF) signals. A new add-on SR device is developed and confirmation that the SR phenomenon exists within RF is obtained when using software defined radio (SDR) as the post-processing receiver. Furthermore, bit error rate (BER) performance is mainly governed by the add-on SR device's output signal quality.
