A spacecraft transmits telemetry data to Earth using a convolutional code with Viterbi decoding. Which effect diminishes the ability to correct bit errors when atmospheric noise increases significantly?

💡 Explanation

The ability to correct bit errors diminishes as the channel capacity nears zero because the information rate exceeds the capacity of the channel to reliably transmit information. Therefore, the error correction code becomes overwhelmed, rather than computational complexity limiting it directly or symbol interleaving being the primary factor.

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