11/17/2013

ENS/ELT466
Telecommunication Systems Lab
Fall 2013
Week 9 Nov. 5

Mid term Review

Average score on mid term = 48.1 12.5 %

An optional mid term upgrade assignment will be offered.

Handouts at end of class.

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Noise, SNR & Histograms

Telecommunication Systems Lab (ENS466)
Fall 2013
Week 9 Nov. 5

Noise
In telecommunications, noise consists of random electrical signals added to the
communication signal in the channel. Noise degrades the quality of the message at
the receiver output.

Noise t

Signal t

NoisySignal t

In many systems, noise is the most important source of degradation to the received
message, and we can predict the quality of the output if we know the magnitude of
the noise, relative to the signal.

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White Noise

PSD (W/Hz)

White noise is a mathematically ideal noise that has equal power spectral density
(PSD) at all frequencies. White noise is made up of a series of infinitely short
impulses of random amplitude, so that the magnitude of the noise waveform at any
given instant can never be predicted from measurements at nearby time instants.

SN ( f )

N0
2

(typ. in W/Hz)

0
0

Frequency
Time

True white noise cannot exist in any real physical system because constant PSD out to
infinite frequency would imply infinite power! But it is a good approximation to many
real noise signals over the relatively narrow passband of a communication channel.

Thermal Noise
Thermal noise arises from the random motion of electrons and other charge carriers
in electronic components due to thermal energy. In resistors, it is also called Johnson
noise.
(+)

()

For components at room temperature, thermal noise is essentially white it has a

constant PSD over all frequencies accessible to ordinary electronic circuits. The total
power into a matched load over a frequency band f is:

PN

N0
f
2

kT f

(in W)

where T is the resistor temperature in Kelvin. This noise power is for an ideal resistor
carbon resistors can be somewhat higher.

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Noise Voltage (Current)

Johnson noise may be described as a noise voltage eN through a source resistance as
shown below. Then the maximum power transfer occurs when RL = R. From the
noise power delivered to the load, we find the open circuit noise voltage as
when RL=R

eL 2
RL

eN 2
R

eN

4kTR f

iN

4kT f
R

eN

4 RP

(in Vrms)
(in A rms)

Of course, if the load is at the same temperature as the source, the load resistor will
generate noise too and there will be no net power transfer. The circuit acts like a
heat engine, delivering usable energy only when there is a temperature difference.

Noise Voltage Example

Consider the noise voltage observed by an oscilloscope at room temperature (290K),
over a 100 MHz bandwidth when its input is open circuited. If the scope has an
input impedance of 1 M , the thermal noise due to its input resistance will be:

escope

Rin
escope

eN

4kTR f

4 1.38 10

~ eN

23

290 106 108

1
2

1.26 mVrms

But if the scope has an input impedance of 50 , the thermal noise due to its input
resistance will be:
escope

4kTR f

4 1.38 10

23

290 50 108

1
2

8.95

Vrms

If the input is short circuited, this thermal input noise voltage will be zero (but noise
from amplifiers and other internal circuitry of the oscilloscope will become evident).
... low impedances are desirable in low noise circuits.
... lower voltages can be used in low impedance circuits.

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Combining Noise Sources

Suppose we have two noise sources added together. Then the summed noise
waveform will be:
ntot t n1 t n2 t
and the time averaged power will be:
Ptot

lim

1
T

T 2
T 2

ntot t

dt

P1

P2

lim

2
T

T 2
T 2

n1 t n2 t dt

If the two noise sources are uncorrelated, the last term will be zero and:

Ptot

P1

P2

Uncorrelated noises are common, so we have the general rule: noise terms add in
power, not in voltage or current.

Bandpass Noise
After white noise has been passed through a bandpass filter, it resembles a carrier
wave that has been both amplitude modulated and phase modulated with random
messages.

nBP t

an t cos 2 f c t

t
Random messages

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Noise Bandwidth of a Filter

Purely reactive components, such as ideal capacitors and inductors, do not generate
thermal noise, but their filtering effects often set the frequency limits f that we have
seen on previous pages.

1.0
0.5
f3dB

Note that the effective noise bandwidth f is not the same as the 3dB bandwidth of
the filter. f refers to an ideal square filter; for simple RC or LC filters like the one
shown above, the noise bandwidth is:
1
f
f 3dB
2
4 RC

SNR
We use signal to noise ratio (SNR) to quantify the impact of noise on communication
systems. SNR is defined by:

SNR

signal power
noise power

PS
PN

SNR is often stated in decibel form:

SNR( dB ) 10 log10

PS
PN

PS dBm

PN dBm

SNR generally degrades as the signal passes through the subsequent stages of a
communication system, unless specific steps such as bandwidth filtering or signal
regeneration are applied to improve SNR.

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Noise Figure
Noise figure (NF) expresses the degradation of SNR as a signal passes through a
device (e.g. a transistor) or subsystem (e.g. an amplifier). The general definition of
noise figure is:
SNRin
NF
SNRout
Like SNR, NF is often stated in dB as:

NF (dB ) 10 log10

SNRin
SNRout

SNRin dB

SNRout dB

(Beasley & Miller refer to the non dB version of NF as noise ratio, but that usage is
not standard.) When specifying NF for electronic devices or systems, it is assumed
that SNRin is determined by the thermal noise of the source resistance that is
connected to the amplifier input, with T=290K.
Since SNR is usually smaller at the output of an amplifier than at the input due to the
noise added by the amplifier itself, NF is usually greater than 1, and NF(dB) is greater
than 0 dB.
(The general definition of noise figure is applied slightly differently in optical
communications, as we shall see in later weeks.)

Amplifier Cascades
When amplifiers are cascaded in a multi stage amplifier chain, the NF of the chain
can be computed from Friisss formula:

NFtot

NF1

NF2 1
G1

NFn 1
G1 G2
Gn

where Gi is the power gain of stage i. Note that both the gain and the noise figure
must be in linear units (ratio) to use Friisss formula if you start with dB values they
must be converted before plugging in! Because the signal gets stronger as it passes
along the chain, noise from later stages has less effect on the final SNR. The NF of the
first amplifier is the most important!

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SNR Calculation Example

A common and important task in communication engineering is to calculate the
output SNR of a system, based on the noise figures of its elements. For example:
Consider a three stage amplifier system. The first stage has a power gain of 14 dB and a NF of
3 dB, while the second and third stages are identical, with power gains of 20 dB and NF = 8 dB.
(a) Find the overall noise figure for the system. (b) Now assume that the system has a 3 dB
bandwidth of 200 kHz determined by an LC tuned circuit at its input and that the input signal is
1 mVrms with a source resistance of 10 k and a source resistance temperature of 127C.
Calculate the output SNR in dB.

To find the system noise figure, we turn to Friisss formula.

NFtot

NFtot
NFtot

NF2 1
G1

NF1

G1

NFn 1
G2
Gn

G1 1014/10
1

6.310 1
6.310 1
25.12
25.12 100.0
1.995 0.211 0.002 2.208
1.995

NF1 103/10

G2
NF2

G3 10

25.12
1.995
20/10

NF3 108/10

100.0
6.310

SNR Calculation Example (part 2)

Consider a three stage amplifier system. The first stage has a power gain of 14 dB and a NF of
3 dB, while the second and third stages are identical, with power gains of 20 dB and NF = 8 dB.
(a) Find the overall noise figure for the system. (b) Now assume that the system has a 3 dB
bandwidth of 200 kHz determined by an LC tuned circuit at its input and that the input signal is
1 mVrms with a source resistance of 10 k and a source resistance temperature of 127C.
Calculate the output SNR in dB.

To compute the output SNR, we find the signal output power and the noise output
power separately. Start with the signal output power which is just the signal input
power multiplied by the cascaded gain of the 3 stages:

Psigout
Psigout

Psigin G1 G2 G3
.001
104

in
esig

G1 G2 G3

Rin

25.12 100 100

2.512 10 5 W

Now on to the noise output power. For a single stage LC circuit, the noise bandwidth
f is:
f

f 3dB

200 kHz

3.142 105 Hz

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SNR Calculation Example (part 3)

The noise output power is the sum of the amplified thermal noise from the source
resistance, plus the noise generated in the amplifier system. The amplified source
noise is:
out
PsourceN
out
sourceN

in
PsourceN
G1 G2 G3
23

4 1.38 10

out
PsourceN

1.742 10 9 W

4kT f G1 G2 G3

273 127 3.142 105 25.12 100 100

The noise output power produced by the amplifier chain is found from its NF:

NFamp
out
PampN
out
ampN

SNRin
SNRout

Psigin 4k 290 K
290K input

4k 290 K

in
sig

out
PampN

f
out
ampN

G1 G2 G3 P

4k 290 K

f G1 G2 G3

f G1 G2 G3 NFamp

1.263 10

2.208 2.789 10 9W

SNR Calculation Example (part 4)

Consider a three stage amplifier system. The first stage has a power gain of 14 dB and a NF of
3 dB, while the second and third stages are identical, with power gains of 20 dB and NF = 8 dB.
(a) Find the overall noise figure for the system. (b) Now assume that the system has a 3 dB
bandwidth of 200 kHz determined by an LC tuned circuit at its input and that the input signal is
1 mVrms with a source resistance of 10 k and a source resistance temperature of 127C.
Calculate the output SNR in dB.

Thus the total output noise is:

out
PtotN

out
PsourceN

out
PampN

1.742 10

2.789 10

4.53 10 9W

and the output SNR is:

SNR

Psigout
out
totN

SNR dB

2.51 10
4.53 10

5
9

5.54 103

10log10 5.54 103

37.4 dB

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Equivalent Input Noise

An common alternative way to specify the noise properties of an amplifier is by its
equivalent input noise power, voltage or current. The equivalent input noise voltage
is computed by measuring the noise at the output and dividing by the amplifiers
voltage gain.
V out
Veqin
(in V/ Hz )
GV
Other measures used to express noise performance include noise resistance and
noise temperature.

Transistor Noise Effects

Shot noise is a form of nearly white noise that arises from the discrete particle nature
of the charge carriers in electronic devices. The magnitude of shot noise can be
computed from first principles for some vacuum tubes, but in solid state devices such
as transistors, shot noise cannot be computed from a simple formula.
Transistors also suffer from 1/f noise (a.k.a. flicker noise), which is strongest at low
frequencies, and transit time noise which sets in at higher frequencies. Device
manufacturers will often provide a chart of noise performance over frequency.

1/f noise

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Noise Contours
Device and amplifier noise are often sensitive to parameters such as source and load
impedance, as well as power supply values. Contour plots of the noise figure may be
used to help with the design process.

Radio Noise & Interference

In addition to the noise contributed by electronics (especially in the receiver), radio
signals are highly susceptible to noise and interference from external sources. These
include:

electric power lines (60/120 Hz hum)

electric motors
fluorescent lights
computers
atmospheric lightning
solar radiation
etc.

Wired connections are more resistant to picking up these external sources. Optical
fiber has the best immunity, followed by coaxial cable and then twisted pair cable.

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Noise Measurement

Number of Trees

Likelihood of occurence

Traditional noise generation & measurement techniques noted in your reading

assignment are still in use, but digital technology has introduced some new options.
For example, digital sampling oscilloscopes can directly measure noise levels in
several ways, including:
FFT of a long time domain trace can read out the PSD up to the Nyquist
frequency of the sampler.
The samples from the time domain trace can be used to construct a
histogram of the noise. A histogram is a statistical graph that plots the
likelihood of a particular measurement value on the Y axis and the
measurement value itself on the X axis.

Measurement value

Noise Histogram
When using a histogram to measure the noise voltage, we just count how many
voltage samples fall inside each histogram bin.

# of samples
at this V

noise free OOK signal

histograms

Volts

Time

noisy OOK signal

width of histogram peaks

gives a direct measurement
of rms noise voltage

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Summary

Noise consists of random electrical signals added to the communication signal in

the channel.
In many systems, noise is the most important source of degradation to the received
message, so we use signal to noise ratio (SNR) to describe signal quality.
White noise is a mathematically ideal noise that has equal power spectral density
(PSD) at all frequencies. True white noise does not exist in nature, but many
practical systems can be approximated filtered white noise.
Thermal noise (a.k.a. Johnson noise) is a nearly white noise that arises from the
random motion of charge carriers in electronic components due to thermal energy.
Thermal noise power into a matched load is given by kT f ; thermal noise voltage
or current can be deduced from this value.
Uncorrelated noise sources add in power, not in voltage or current.
The noise bandwidth f depends on the passband shape of the filter. For single
stage RC or LC filters, f
2 f 3dB .
SNR = (signal power)/(noise power)
NF = SNRin/SNRout noise where SNRin is evaluated for thermal noise at 290K.
To find the NF of an amplifier cascade, use Friisss formula. Remember that the NF
of the first amplifier has the greatest impact.
Transistor noise includes shot noise, 1/f noise, and transit time noise as well as
thermal noise.
A noise histogram is a way to measure noise voltage with a modern DSO.

ENS466/ELT466 Assignments

Lab Report:

Lab report #8 will cover Lab Assignment 9 (this weeks lab); it is due at the start of
class on 11/12.

Homework Assignment:

mid term upgrade.

Reading:

to be posted on Blackboard.

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Backups/Alternates
Telecommunication Systems Lab
(ENS466)
Fall 2013

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