The interplay between nonlinear dynamic systems and noise has proved to be of great relevance in several application areas. In this presentation, we focus on the areas of information transmission and storage. We review some recent results on informat
ion transmission through nonlinear channels assisted by noise. We also present recent proposals of memory devices in which noise plays an essential role. Finally, we discuss new results on the influence of noise in memristors.
In this paper we extend our investigations on noise-assisted storage devices through the experimental study of a loop composed of a single Schmitt trigger and an element that introduces a finite delay. We show that such a system allows the storage of
several bits and does so more efficiently for an intermediate range of noise intensities. Finally, we study the probability of erroneous information retrieval as a function of elapsed time and show a way for predicting device performance independently of the number of stored bits.
The increasing capacity of modern computers, driven by Moores Law, is accompanied by smaller noise margins and higher error rates. In this paper we propose a memory device, consisting of a ring of two identical overdamped bistable forward-coupled osc
illators, which may serve as a building block in a larger scale solution to this problem. We show that such a system is capable of storing one bit and its performance improves with the addition of noise. The proposed device can be regarded as asynchronous, in the sense that stored information can be retrieved at any time and, after a certain synchronization time, the probability of erroneous retrieval does not depend on the interrogated oscillator. We characterize memory persistence time and show it to be maximized for the same noise range that both minimizes the probability of error and ensures synchronization. We also present experimental results for a hard-wired version of the proposed memory, consisting of a loop of two Schmitt triggers. We show that this device is capable of storing one bit and does so more efficiently in the presence of noise.
The lack of extensive research in the application of inexpensive wireless sensor nodes for the early detection of wildfires motivated us to investigate the cost of such a network. As a first step, in this paper we present several results which relate
the time to detection and the burned area to the number of sensor nodes in the region which is protected. We prove that the probability distribution of the burned area at the moment of detection is approximately exponential, given that some hypotheses hold: the positions of the sensor nodes are independent random variables uniformly distributed and the number of sensor nodes is large. This conclusion depends neither on the number of ignition points nor on the propagation model of the fire.
