How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

Re:How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Vo... by tb0ne on Monday June 03, 2024 @01:57PM (#40565337)

Super interesting! But I feel like there is a bit of a conclusion missing for me.

So 1500 Photons hit the receiver per bit send, but this is obviously way to few to keep processing the signal and it will just be drowned out by noise? Where do we go from here? Does voyager repeat its signal gazillions of times so we can average out the noise on our end? Where can I find more information on what is done with these few photons?

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Re:How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Vo... by SonOfLilit on Monday June 03, 2024 @04:47PM (#40567369)

No, those 1500 photons are enough and we basically read the signal from them, from my reading of the comments here.

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Re:How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Vo... by djha-skin on Monday June 03, 2024 @07:14PM (#40568820)

Look up Solomon Reed erasure coding. Voyager uses it, so does qrp Ham radio operators.

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Re:How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Vo... by ballooney on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @08:58AM (#40574092)

[Reed-Solomon is the more conventional formulation if you do end up going looking]

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