Stochastic resonance

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Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon in which a signal that is normally too weak to be detected by a sensor can be boosted by adding white noise to the signal, which contains a wide spectrum of frequencies. The frequencies in the white noise corresponding to the original signal's frequencies will resonate with each other, amplifying the original signal while not amplifying the rest of the white noise – thereby increasing the signal-to-noise ratio, which makes the original signal more prominent. Further, the added white noise can be enough to be detectable by the sensor, which can then filter it out to effectively detect the original, previously undetectable signal.

This phenomenon of boosting undetectable signals by resonating with added white noise extends to many other systems – whether electromagnetic, physical or biological – and is an active area of research.^[1]

Stochastic resonance was first proposed by the Italian physicists Roberto Benzi, Alfonso Sutera and Angelo Vulpiani in 1981,^[2] and the first application they proposed (together with Giorgio Parisi) was in the context of climate dynamics.^[3][4]