Abstract
An optical communication channel is constructed using a heated thermo-electrically pumped, high efficiency infrared light-emitting diode (LED). In these devices, electro-luminescent cooling is observed, resulting in greater than unity (> 100%) efficiency in converting electrical power to optical power. The average amount of electrical energy required to generate a photon (4.3 meV) is much less than the optical energy in that photon (520 meV). Such a light source can serve as a test-bed for fundamental studies of energy-efficient bosonic communication channels. In this low energy consumption mode, we demonstrate data transmission at 3 kilobits per second (kbps) with only 120 picowatts of input electric power. Although the channel employs a mid-infrared source with limited quantum efficiency, a binary digit can be communicated using 40 femtojoules with a bit error rate of 3 x 10-3.
Highlights
The topic of minimum energy requirements for transmitting a bit of information dates back to Shannon’s work in the 1940s [1]
We highlight the difference between sending a binary digit ‘0’ or ‘1’ across a physical noisy channel with some finite bit error rate (BER) and sending one bit worth of mutual information, for which there is no BER
The well-known Landauer limit for the minimum energy of kBT ln(2) needed to communicate a bit of information at temperature T across a linear channel applies even for a thermophotonic infrared light-emitting diode (LED) where the energy cost of producing a single photon may be less than kBT ln(2)
Summary
The topic of minimum energy requirements for transmitting a bit of information dates back to Shannon’s work in the 1940s [1]. The efficiency of electrical-to-optical power conversion is critical to minimizing the energy consumption of the devices which perform these operations.
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