EEE 309 Communication Theory

Semester: Jan 2019

Dr. Md. Farhad Hossain

Associate Professor
Department of EEE, BUET

Email: [email protected]
Office: ECE 331, ECE Building
 Part 02:
Noise in Communication
Systems

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 Noise
Noise:
❑ Any unwanted signal, whether audible or not
❑ Noise gets added to the signal and degrades the quality of signal

Noise and Interference:

Although they play a somewhat similar role in electrical systems, they are dissimilar
in nature in one important aspect

➢ Noise is usually composed of randomly occurring voltages, which are unrelated in

phase or frequency and may sometimes be of a very peaky nature

➢ Interference, on the other hand, is usually more structured than noise since it
arises as unwanted coupling from just a few signals (e.g., from other users) in the
network

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 Source of Noise
Artificial or man-made sources:
❑ Commutator motors
❑ Spark plugs of vehicles
❑ Faulty switches
❑ Fluorescent lights
❑ Electric shavers
❑ Power lines

Natural sources: Solid lines:

Man-made noise
❑ Cosmic (galactic) radiation
❑ Atmospheric (e.g., lightning
discharge, rain attenuation)
❑ Intrinsic circuit noise
❑ etc.

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 White Noise
❑ Both thermal and shot noise are characterized as white noise
❑ White noise means it contains noise of all frequency with a flat PSD

N0 N0
S( f ) = R ( ) =  (t )
2 2

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 Types of Noise
1. Thermal Noise:
❑ It is produced by the random motion of ‘free’ electrons in a conductor
❑ Any substance with temperature above zero Kelvin (absolute zero) contains some
electrons that are free to move about in that substance. The amount of energy
contained by these electrons increases as the temperature increases, and an
increase in energy means an increase in the average speeds of the free electrons.
However, moving electrons constitute an electric current as electrons randomly
collide with lattice atoms. Since the currents increase with temperature, the noise
power likewise increases with temperature.

❑ Properties:
1. Thermal noise is present in any conductor
2. The only predictable property of thermal noise is its average power
3. In the case of thermal noise, the power is spread uniformly up to very high
frequency (about a 10% drop at 2 THz)
➢ Thermal Noise characteristic is white
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 Thermal Noise
The mean-square thermal noise voltage at the terminal of an open-circuit

(Vn ) = 4KTBR
resistor of value Rs is: 2
S

where, (Vn)2 = Mean-square value of thermal voltage

K = Boltzmann’s constant = 1.38 x 10 –23 J/K
T = Absolute temperature of the resistor in Kelvin
B = Equivalent noise bandwidth (system bandwidth) in Hz
Rs = Resistance of the conductor

Thermal noise power (Maximum):

Vn2
Pn = 2
 Rs
(2Rs ) Vn

4 KTBRs2
= 2
= KTB Rs
4 Rs
= −174 + 10 log B , Unit: dBm
T = 300 K
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 Types of Noise
2. Shot Noise:
❑ Generated in active electronic components due to discrete and random
emission of electrons
❑ Shot Noise normally occurs when there is a potential barrier (voltage
differential). PN junction diode is an example that has potential barrier.
When the electrons and holes cross the barrier, shot noise is produced.
❑ A diode, a transistor, and vacuum tube, all will produce shot noise.
❑ A resistor normally does not produce shot noise since there is no
potential barrier built within a resistor
❑ If the active device provides amplification, the noise also gets amplified
along with the signal
❑ Shot noise characteristic is white

in = RMS value of shot noise current

(in ) = 2eI B
2
a
e = Charge of an electron
Ia = Average current
B = Bandwidth of the system
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Types of Noise

Shot Noise

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 Types of Noise
3. Impulse Noise:
❑ Impulse noise can occur from switching transients in electromechanical
switching offices or from rotary dial telephones
❑ Step-by-step switching is the most frequent source
❑ Impulse noise is usually measured in terms of number of pulses per
second

4. Quantization Noise:
❑ Quantization noise arises during the
digitization process as the sampled
values are different than the quantized
value

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 Noise Figure (NF)
Noise Figure F relates the SNR at the input of a network (or device) to the
SNR at the output of the network (or device)
(SNR) P /N
F= in
= in in

(SNR) out
P /N
out out

30dB

NF = 10 dB
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 Noise Figure (NF)
Si = Signal power at the amplifier input
(SNR) N0
F= in
= Ni = Noise power at the amplifier input
(SNR)
out
GN i No = Noise power at the amplifier output
= GNi + Na = G(Ni + Nai)
Nai = Amplifier noise referred to the input
G = amplifier gain

Si
Ni N ai Na
F= = 1+ = 1+
GSi Ni GN i
G ( N i + N ai )
For n-stage cascaded system:

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Noise Figure (NF)

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 Noise Temperature
Any white noise source can be specified in terms of an effective noise
temperature
Here,
N ai = ( F − 1) N i T00 is the reference temperature of the noise
source, i.e., customarily taken as 290K
= KTR B = ( F − 1) KT0 B T0R is called the effective (equivalent) input
noise temperature of a device (e.g., an
= TR = ( F − 1)T0 amplifier)

= TR = ( F − 1)290 K

❑ Noise temperature is an alternative of NF, but equivalent characterization of

noiseness of a device
❑ In general, applications involving very low noise devices seem to favor the
effective temperature measure over the NF

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 Encountering the Problem of Noise
Alternate Options:
1. Increasing transmit power: Not feasible
2. Increasing bandwidth: very expensive
3. Amplifier at the receiver side: Not useful as it amplifies the noise as well
4. Amplifiers along the line
5. Regenerative repeaters along the line

Amplifiers
along the line

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dB, dBm, dBW

???

Can be added
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 Example
Consider a system as shown in the figure operates at T = 230C with a
bandwidth of 2GHz. The length of the transmission line is 10 km.
Signal attenuation and noise gain along the transmission line are 1
dB/km and 0.5 dB/km respectively. The gain and the noise figure of the
amplifier is 100 and 10 respectively. If the signal power at the input of
the amplifier is 1mW, calculate -
(i) noise power at the output of the amplifier
(ii) SNR at the end of the transmission line

10 km