Ultra-low-power (ULP) Internet of Things (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 channel state information (CSI) estimation and 2-antenna selection diversity desirable. 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最低能耗。噪声调制（NoiseMod）通过噪声类信号的统计方差来编码数据，从而消除对相干载波的需求。为弥合理论潜力与实际部署之间的差距，本文对NoiseMod与标准调制方式（如BPSK和NC-FSK）进行了基准测试。我们解析推导了AWGN和瑞利衰落信道中的最优检测阈值和误码率（BER）。结果表明，非相干NoiseMod在衰落环境中会出现灾难性的错误平层，从而需要引入信道状态信息（CSI）估计和两天线选择分集等架构增强。基于考虑ADC的能量模型，我们揭示了NoiseMod的过采样严重制约了容量，并在AWGN信道中为达到10^{-3}的BER比NC-FSK额外引入8 dB的SNR惩罚。尽管其无振荡器设计大幅降低了基础电路功耗，但这些局限性确立了关键的能量交叉距离（该距离随频率增加而减小）。在该距离以下，NoiseMod具有更优的能效；超过该距离后，克服其SNR惩罚所需的辐射功率使得BPSK等相干方案具有显著优势。