Ultra-low-power (ULP) IoT applications demand communication architectures with minimal energy consumption. Noise Modulation (NoiseMod) addresses this by encoding data through the statistical variance of a noise-like signal, eliminating the need for a coherent carrier. To bridge the gap between theoretical potential and practical deployment, this paper benchmarks NoiseMod against standard modulations like BPSK and NC-FSK. We analytically derive the optimal detection threshold and Bit Error Rate (BER) for AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels. Our results show that non-coherent NoiseMod suffers a catastrophic error floor in fading environments, making architectural additions like 2-antenna selection diversity mandatory. Using an ADC-aware energy model, we reveal that NoiseMod's oversampling severely bottlenecks capacity and imposes an 8 dB SNR penalty compared to NC-FSK for a $10^{-3}$ BER in AWGN. Despite its oscillator-free design drastically reducing baseline circuit power, these limitations establish a critical energy crossover distance, which decreases with frequency. Below this distance, NoiseMod offers superior energy efficiency; beyond it, the radiated power needed to overcome its SNR penalty makes coherent schemes like BPSK vastly superior.

翻译：超低功耗（ULP）物联网应用要求通信架构具有极低的能耗。噪声调制（NoiseMod）通过利用类噪声信号的统计方差对数据进行编码，从而避免了对相干载波的需求。为弥合理论潜力与实际部署之间的差距，本文将噪声调制与BPSK、NC-FSK等标准调制方式进行了比较。我们推导了加性高斯白噪声（AWGN）与瑞利衰落信道下的最优检测阈值和误码率（BER）解析表达式。结果表明，非相干噪声调制在衰落环境中会出现灾难性的错误平层，迫使必须引入双天线选择分集等架构增强。基于考虑模数转换器（ADC）能耗的模型，我们发现噪声调制的过采样会严重限制容量，并在AWGN信道下为实现$10^{-3}$误码率导致比NC-FSK高出8 dB的信噪比（SNR）代价。尽管其无振荡器设计大幅降低了基础电路功耗，但这些局限形成了随频率减小而缩短的关键能量交叉距离：在此距离内，噪声调制具有更优能效；超出该距离后，克服其信噪比代价所需的辐射功率使BPSK等相干方案具有显著优势。