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NOISE

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Noise
▪ Noise is an electronic signal that gets added to a radio
or information signal as it is transmitted from one
place to another.
▪ It is not the same as interference from other
information signals.

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Noise
▪ Noise is the static you hear in the speaker when you
tune any AM or FM receiver to any position between
stations. It is also the “snow” or “confetti” that is visible
on a TV screen.
▪ The noise level in a system is proportional to
temperature and bandwidth, the amount of current
flowing in a component, the gain of the circuit, and the
resistance of the circuit.

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Noise
Signal-to-Noise Ratio
▪ The signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio indicates the relative
strengths of the signal and the noise in a
communication system.
▪ The stronger the signal and the weaker the noise, the
higher the S/N ratio.
▪ The S/N ratio is a power ratio.

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Noise
External Noise
▪ External noise comes from sources over which we have
little or no control, such as:
▪ Industrial sources
▪ motors, generators, manufactured equipment
▪ Atmospheric sources
▪ The naturally occurring electrical disturbances in the earth’s
atmosphere; atmospheric noise is also called static.
▪ Space
▪ The sun radiates a wide range of signals in a broad noise
spectrum.

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Noise
Internal Noise
▪ Electronic components in a receiver such as resistors,
diodes, and transistors are major sources of internal
noise. Types of internal noise include:
▪ Thermal noise
▪ Semiconductor noise
▪ Intermodulation distortion

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Noise
▪ Thermal Noise
▪ Produced by the random motion of electrons in a
conductor due to heat
▪ Noise found everywhere in electronic circuitry
▪ An equal mixture of all frequency
▪ Sometimes called white noise in analogy with white
light

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Noise
▪ Noise Power

PN = kTB

Where,
PN = noise power in watts
k = Boltzmann’s constant, 1.38 x 10-23 (J/K)
T = absolute temperature in Kelvins (K)
B = noise power bandwidth in Hertz (Hz)

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Noise
▪ Example:
A receiver has a noise power bandwidth of 10 kHZ. A
resistor that matches the receiver input impedance is
connected across its antenna terminals. What is the noise
power contributed by that resistor in the receiver
bandwidth, if the resistor has a temperature of 27°C?

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Noise
▪

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Noise
▪ Shot Noise
- a type of noise that has a power spectrum that
resembles that of thermal energy in hertz of bandwidth,
at a frequencies from dc into the gigahertz region.
- due to random variations in current flow in active
devices such as tubes, transistors, and semiconductor
diodes
- describes the random arrival of electrons arriving at
the anode of a vacuum tube, like individual pellets of
shot from a shotgun

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Noise
▪ Shot noise
- usually represented by a current source and is
given by the equation

where IN = RMS noise current, in amperes

q = magnitude of the charge on an electron
equal to 1.6 x 10-19 Coulomb
IO = dc bias current in the device, in amperes
B = bandwidth over which the noise is observed
in Hz

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Noise
▪ Example:
A diode noise generator is required to produce 10uV
of noise in a receiver with an input impedance of 75Ω,
resistive, and a noise power bandwidth of 200 kHz.
What must the current through the diode be?

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Noise
▪ Partition Noise
- Similar to shot noise in its spectrum and mechanism
of generation, but occurs only in devices where a
single current separates into two or more paths
- The amount of partition noise depends greatly on the
characteristics of a particular device
▪ Excess Noise
- also called flicker noise or 1/f noise
- sometimes called pink noise

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▪ Transit –Time Noise

-an irregular, random variation produced from any
modification to a stream of carriers as they pass from the
input to the output of a device

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Noise
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Noise
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Noise
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Noise
▪ Example:
The signal power at the input to an amplifier is 100µW
and the noise power is 1µW. At the output, the signal
power is 1W and the noise power is 30mW. What is the
amplifier noise figure, as a ratio?

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Noise
▪

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▪ Example:
A three-stage amplifier has stages with the following
specifications:
Stage Power Gain Noise Figure
1 10 2 2 25 4
3 30 5
Calculate the power gain, noise figure, and noise
temperature for the entire amplifier, assuming matched
conditions.

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Seatwork
1. A receiver with a 75ohm input resistance operates
at a temperature of 31°C. The received signal is at 89
MHz with a bandwidth of 6 MHz. The received signal
voltage of 8.3 μV is applied to an amplifier with a
noise figure of 2.8 dB. Find (a) the input noise power,
(b) the input signal power, (c) S/N, in decibels, (d) the
noise factor and S/N of the amplifier, and (e) the noise
temperature of the amplifier.
2. Suppose there is 30 mV from one noise source that
is combined with 40 mV from another noise source.
Calculate the total noise voltage.
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Seatwork

3. If you have 100 mV of signal and 10 mV of noise,

both across the same 100-ohm load, what is the
signal-to-noise ratio in dB?
4. The input to an amplifier has a signal-to-noise
ratio of 100 dB and an output signal-to-noise ratio of
80 dB. Find NF, both in dB and as a ratio.
5. A microwave receiver has a noise temperature of
145 K. Find its noise figure.
6. Two cascaded amplifiers each have a noise
figure of 5 and a gain of 10. Find the total NF for the
pair. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies