It takes half the energy of a photon to send one bit reliably on the Poisson channel with feedback

Abstract

We consider the transmission of a single bit over the continuous-time Poisson channel with noiseless feedback. We show that to send the bit reliably requires, on the average, half the energy of a photon. In the absence of peak-power constraints this holds irrespective of the intensity of the dark current. We also solve for the energy required to send $log_{2} M$ bits.

A slightly extended version of a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the Sixth Joint Workshop on Coding and Communications (JWCC), Relais San Maurizio, Santo Stefano Belbo, Italy, October 17-19, 2010