Harnessing the Power of Noise: A Survey of Techniques and Applications

In Computer science and across various engineering fields, noise is often considered a nuisance and annoyance. It distorts details and makes data less accurate. In the past, the goal has often been to eliminate noise with the goal to make systems more reliable and accurate. But views on noise are changing. New findings suggest that noise can actually enhance and advance technologies in many areas, making us see it not just as a disruption but as a way to improve system performance. Thus, once unwanted and hard to control, noise now appears to be a key player in improving the performance of complex information processing systems [22]. This phenomena is often known as Stochastic Resonance, which helps clear up signals, improve image quality, and strengthen models in machine learning [7, 22, 101]. This duality of noise -- both a problem and a benefit -- highlights the tricky role of noise while optimizing advanced neural networks and machine learning models.