Note: My question is theoretical and my goal is to apply the intuition from the answer to a different field.
Imagine I have a real number $X$ which I want to send it over some noisy channel. (The metric that should be optimized is probably squared error).
I have a limited amount of energy $E$ that I can use to send the signal.
What would be the distribution of the received number $R$ and how would it be affected by E
?
Just an example: A kind of formula I'm expecting as an answer ():
- $R(E) = X + Noise/E$.
- $R(E) = X + Noise/\sqrt E$.
- $R(E) = X + Noise/ln(E)$.
- something else...
I want to know the correct formula. The most important part for me is the effect of $E$.
P.S. I know that I've omitted some information that might turn out useful. If that's true, I'd like to know how the answer is affected by that information. The noise is... say, some "common" type of noise. The transmission/encoding/correction method is the optimum one given the optimization metric (SE) and the noise. (What would that method be BTW, for some common types of noise?) Does the answer change is the time to send a signal is limited?
Update: Trying to state the question in a more formal way:
We're transmitting a real number.
There is a metric $loss(x_{sent}, x_{received})$ that the transmission should minimize. The $loss$ is a non-negative, symmetric and monotonously increases when $|x_{sent} - x_{received}|$ increases. An example would be $loss(x_{sent}, x_{received}) = (x_{sent} - x_{received})^2$
There is some transmission algorithm (encoding, transmission, decoding, error correction) that uses energy to send the signal over the noisy channel/medium. The algorithm must be optimal in that it minimizes mean $loss$ when transmitting over a given noisy channel and using the specified amount of energy $E$: $best\_transmitter:=argmin(mean(loss(x, transmit(x))))$
What would be the relation between the following distributions?: $$(best\_transmitter(x, \alpha*E) - x)$$ and $$(best\_transmitter(x, E) - x) $$
If I spend 10 times more energy on transmission, would the error be 100 times smaller, 10 times smaller, 3.1 times smaller or 2.3 times smaller? (given the optimal transmission algorithm)