Can stochastic resonance be used in detection?

This paper deals with stochastic resonance and its application in sine detection. The nonlinear physical phenomenon of stochastic resonance generally occurs in bistable systems excited by a random noise plus a sine. Such systems force cooperation between the input noise and the input sine: Provided a fine tuning between the noise amplitude and the dynamics, the system reacts periodically. The interesting fact is that the local output signal-to-noise ratio presents a maximum when plotted against the input noise amplitude. In this paper we recall the main results for the discrete-time nonlinear AR(1) systems. We then show how stochastic resonance can be used to detect small noisy sine and that the classical incoherent detector can be improved in some non-Gaussian contexts.