No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
The capacity of the white Gaussian noise (WGN) channel is widely stated as S/N0 nats/unit time. This conclusion is commonly derived either formally, or from the capacity, W ln(l + S/N0W), of the corresponding band-limited channel with bandwidth W, by taking W→8. In this paper, the WGN channel capacity is instead found directly by treating WGN as an arbitrary noise sequence that whitens in a general sense. In addition, the coding theorems proved make explicit the class of allowable receivers, either finite- or infinite-dimensional correlation receivers, or unconstrained. The capacities for these three receiver classes are found to be, respectively: S/N0 for S> 0, and 0 for S = 0; and 8 for all S ≥ 0. In those cases where the capacity is infinite, actual transmitter–receiver pairs are specified that achieve capacity.