Noise

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This article is about noise as an unwanted phenomenon. For other uses, see Noise
(disambiguation).

In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital
electronics, noise is an unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a
generalisation of the audible noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission.
Signal noise is heard as acoustic noise if played through a loudspeaker; it manifests as
'snow' on a television or video image. In signal processing or computing it can be
considered unwanted data without meaning; that is, data that is not being used to transmit
a signal, but is simply produced as an unwanted by-product of other activities. In
Information Theory, however, noise is still considered to be information. In a broader
sense, film grain or even advertisements encountered while looking for something else
can be considered noise. In biology, noise can describe the variability of a measurement
around the mean, for example transcriptional noise describes the variability in gene
activity between cells in a population.

Noise can block, distort, change or interfere with the meaning of a message in both
human and electronic communication.

In many of these areas, the special case of thermal noise arises, which sets a fundamental
lower limit to what can be measured or signaled and is related to basic physical processes
at the molecular level described by well-established thermodynamics considerations,
some of which are expressible by simple formulae.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Subjective distinctions
• 2 Acoustic noise
• 3 Regulation of acoustic noise
• 4 Acoustic noise in film sound
• 5 Audio noise
• 6 Non-acoustic noise
o 6.1 Electronic noise
o 6.2 Visual noise
o 6.3 Noisy genes
• 7 See also
• 8 Additional reading
 • 9 References

• 10 External links

[edit] Subjective distinctions

Calling some signal or sound noise is often a subjective distinction. One person's
maximum-volume music listening pleasure might be another's unbearable noise.

An annoying background hiss interfering with short-wave radio broadcasts was found to
be due to extraterrestrial, indeed cosmic, processes; listening to this "noise" to the
exclusion of all other signals with ever more sensitive antennae and receivers is now the
science of radio astronomy. Radio astronomers are still plagued by noise in their signals
—but now it is thermal noise generated in their equipment interfering with wanted
signals from the cosmos.

[edit] Acoustic noise

When speaking of noise in relation to sound, what is commonly meant is meaningless
sound of greater than usual volume. Thus, a loud activity may be referred to as noisy.
However, conversations of other people may be called noise for people not involved in
any of them, and noise can be any unwanted sound such as the noise of dogs barking,
neighbours playing loud music, road traffic sounds, chainsaws, or aircraft, spoiling the
quiet of the countryside.

Acoustic noise can be anything from low-level but annoying to loud and harmful. At one
extreme users of public transport sometimes complain about the faint and tinny sounds
emanating from the headphones or earbuds of somebody listening to a portable audio
player; at the other the sound of very loud music, a jet engine at close quarters, etc. can
cause permanent irreversible hearing damage.

[edit] Regulation of acoustic noise

Main article: Noise regulation

Noise regulation includes statutes or guidelines relating to sound transmission established

by national, state or provincial and municipal levels of government. After a watershed
passage of the U.S. Noise Control Act of 1972[1], the program was abandoned at the
federal level, under President Ronald Reagan, in 1981 and the issue was left to local and
state governments. Although the UK and Japan enacted national laws in 1960 and 1967
respectively, these laws were not at all comprehensive or fully enforceable as to address
(a) generally rising ambient noise (b) enforceable numerical source limits on aircraft and
motor vehicles or (c) comprehensive directives to local government.
[edit] Acoustic noise in film sound
For film sound theorists and practitioners at the advent of talkies c.1928/1929, noise was
non-speech sound or natural sound and for many of them noise (especially asynchronous
use with image) was desired over the evils of dialogue synchronized to moving image.
The director and critic René Clair writing in 1929 makes a clear distinction between film
dialogue and film noise and very clearly suggests that noise can have meaning and be
interpreted: "...it is possible that an interpretation of noises may have more of a future in
it. Sound cartoons, using "real" noises, seem to point to interesting possibilities" ('The Art
of Sound' (1929)). Alberto Cavalcanti uses noise as a synonym for natural sound ('Sound
in Films' (1939)) and as late as 1960, Siegfried Kracauer was referring to noise as non-
speech sound ('Dialogue and Sound' (1960)).

[edit] Audio noise

Main article: Colors of noise

In audio, recording, and broadcast systems audio noise refers to the residual low level
sound (usually hiss and hum) that is heard in quiet periods of programme.

In audio engineering it can also refer to the unwanted residual electronic noise signal that
gives rise to acoustic noise heard as "hiss". This signal noise is commonly measured
using A-weighting or ITU-R 468 weighting

[edit] Non-acoustic noise

[edit] Electronic noise

Main article: Noise (electronics)

Electronic noise exists in all circuits and devices as a result of thermal noise, also referred
to as Johnson Noise. It is caused by random variations in current or voltage caused by the
random movement of charge carriers (usually electrons) carrying the current as they are
jolted around by thermal energy. Thermal noise can be reduced by reducing the
temperature of the circuit. This phenomenon limits the minimum signal level that any
radio receiver can usefully respond to, because there will always be a small but
significant amount of thermal noise arising in its input circuits. This is why radio
telescopes, which search for very low levels of signal from space, use front-end low-
noise amplifier circuits cooled with liquid nitrogen.

There are several other sources of noise in electronic circuits such as shot noise, seen in
very low-level signals where the finite number of energy-carrying particles becomes
significant, or flicker noise (1/f noise) in semiconductor devices.

[edit] Visual noise

Main article: Image noise

Noise is also present in images. Electronic noise will be present in camera sensors, and
the physical size of the grains of film emulsion creates visual noise. This kind of noise is
referred to as "grain."

Noise is also used in the creation of 2D and 3D images by computer. Sometimes noise is
added to images to hide the sudden transitions inherent in digital representation of color,
known as "banding." This adding of noise is referred to as "dithering." Sometimes noise
is used to create the subject matter itself. Procedural noise (such as Perlin noise) is often
used to create natural-looking variation in computer generated images.

[edit] Noisy genes

Main article: Transcriptional noise

The activity and regulation of our genes are also subject to noise. Transcriptional noise
refers to the variability in gene activity between cells in genetically identical populations
(even identical twins are non-identical). Noise in gene activity has tremendous
consequences on cell behaviour, and must be mitigated or integrated. Noise impacts upon
the effectiveness of clinical treatment, with resistance of bacteria to antibiotics
demonstrably caused by non-genetic differences. Variability in gene expression may also
contribute to resistance of sub-populations of cancer cells to chemotherapy. In certain
contexts, such as the survival of microbes in rapidly changing stressful environments, or
several types of scattered differentiation, noise may be essential.