Channel Capacity

The channel capacity, as seen in Equation #eqnchannelcap#377>, and repeated here, can now be calculated.

#equation378#

Using the estimated values for noise, and assuming a transmitter voltage on the order of 10 V, a channel capacity can be calculated for a foot-to-foot configuration or as a function of receiver height. For the height dependent case, the channel capacity decreases roughly linearly with height.

Using the most current experimental hardware (not a low noise op-amp) with a front end low pass filter to limit the bandwidth to 1.2 kHz, and an interference estimate of white noise at 50 #tex2html_wrap_inline1372#, the channel capacity is roughly 30.8 kilobits per second (kbps). A low noise op-amp would increase this to roughly 33.9 kbps. The thermal noise has almost no impact -- less than 10 bits per second decrease relative to an ideal system without thermal noise. Using a wider bandwidth is the most effective for increasing channel capacity. Spreading the signal to a 10 kHz band, with a low noise op-amp yields a channel capacity of 252 kbps. At 100kHz, the capacity is in excess of 2000 kbps.