Noise in Communication Systems

Module - 6
1 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023
Synopsis
 Introduction

 Noise and its types

 Noise voltage and power

 Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)

 Noise figure

 Noise temperature

 Figure of Merit in DSB-SC, SSB-SC,AM and FM receivers.

2 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

What is Noise?
 In any communication system, during the transmission of the signal
or while receiving the signal,
 Some unwanted signal gets introduced into the communication,
 Making it unpleasant for the receiver, and questioning the quality of
the communication.
 Such a disturbance is called as Noise.
 Noise is an unwanted signal, which interferes with the original
message signal and corrupts the parameters of the message signal.
 This alteration in the communication process, leads to the message
getting altered.
 It most likely enters at the channel or the receiver.

3 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

What is Noise?

 Hence, it is understood that the noise is some signal which has no

pattern and no constant frequency or amplitude.
 It is quite random and unpredictable.
 Measures are usually taken to reduce it, though it can’t be completely
eliminated.
4 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023
Types of Noise
 Most common examples of noise are −
 Hiss sound in radio receivers
 Buzz sound amidst of telephone conversations
 Flicker in television receivers, etc
 The classification of noise is done depending on the type of the
source, the effect it shows or the relation it has with the receiver,
etc.
 There are two main ways in which noise is produced.
 One is through some external source
 while the other is created by an internal source, within the
receiver section.

5 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Types of Noise

6 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Types of Noise
External Source
 This noise is produced by the external sources, which may occur in
the medium or channel of communication usually.
 This noise cannot be completely eliminated.
 The best way is to avoid the noise from affecting the signal.
Examples
 Most common examples of this type of noise are
 Atmospheric noise (due to irregularities in the atmosphere).
 Extra-terrestrial noise, such as solar noise and cosmic noise.
 Industrial noise.

7 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Types of Noise
Atmospheric Noise
 Atmospheric noise (also referred to as ‘static’) arises from lightning
discharges (cloud-to-cloud, or cloud-to-earth), caused by
thunderstorms.
 Lightnings are heavy electrical current discharges, running into
thousands of amperes
 And are accompanied by intense radiation of electromagnetic waves
over a broad spectrum of frequencies.
 Different frequency bands of these electromagnetic waves propagate
via the usual modes of propagation corrupt the desired signal.
 Atmospheric noise has frequency components extending from very
low frequencies up to hundreds of megahertz.
8 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023
Types of Noise
Extra-terrestrial Noise
 This has two components—‘solar noise’, and ‘galactic noise’.
 Solar Noise Our sun, being a gaseous body with very high surface
temperatures (in excess of 6000oC), radiates considerable amount of
noise,
 whose intensity has been observed to be having a cyclic variation with
a 11-year period, called the 11-year sun-spot cycle.
 Galactic Noise All the stars are also hot gaseous bodies and they too
radiate noise.
 The radiation reaching the earth from each individual star may be very
small compared to that from our sun, because of their very large
distance.
 The extra-terrestrial radiation has spectral components from a few
megahertz to about a few gigahertz.
9 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023
Types of Noise
Man-made Noise
 Automobile ignition, aircraft ignition, fluorescent lamps, sparking at
the brushes of electric motors, etc.,
 Radiate electromagnetic waves that cause disturbance to
communications, especially in the 1 MHz to 500 MHz range.
 Because of the nature of its origin, this noise is more intense in
urban areas than in rural areas.
 However, it must be noted that noise emanating from these sources
can travel considerable distances.

10 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Types of Noise
Internal Source
 This noise is produced by the receiver components while functioning.
 The components in the circuits, due to continuous functioning, may
produce few types of noise.
 This noise is quantifiable.
 A proper receiver design may lower the effect of this internal noise.
Examples
 Thermal agitation noise (Johnson noise or Electrical noise)
 Shot noise (due to the random movement of electrons and holes)
 Transit-time noise (during transition)
 Miscellaneous noise is another type of noise which includes flicker,
resistance effect and mixer generated noise, etc.

11 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
 We know that at any temperature above 0 K, the free electrons in a
conductor possess kinetic energy and
 So will be in random motion because of collisions with the lattice.
 This random motion of electrons is equivalent to a random current
flow within the conductor, and this creates a random voltage across
the conductor.
 This random voltage across a conductor, arising from the random
motion of free electrons inside it because of thermal agitation is
called ‘thermal noise’.
 It is also known as Johnson noise.
 This thermal noise voltage fluctuates randomly about a mean value
of zero.
12 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023
Thermal Noise
 Analysing the thermal agitation of the free electrons by using
quantum mechanics, it has been shown
 That at a temperature of T K, the power spectral density of the
thermal noise across a conductor having a resistance of R ohms, is
given by

 where

13 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
 For all practical purposes, we can safely assume that the Power
Spectral Density (PSD) of thermal noise is constant and independent
of frequency and that it has a value given by

 It must be noted that P(f), represents the two-sided power spectral

density as shown below

14 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise –White Noise
 Since thermal noise has a PSD which is almost a constant, it has all
frequency components from minus infinity to plus infinity, in equal
measure.
 Such a noise is called white noise.

PSD of white noise ACF of white noise

15 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise –White Noise
 Since its PSD is constant, its Auto Correlation Function (inverse FT
of PSD) is an impulse function in time.
 This indicates that any two samples of white noise, however close
they may be in time, are uncorrelated.
 However, it must be noted that no physical noise source can be a
white-noise source,
 since white noise implies infinite noise power (area under PSD
curve).

16 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise

 We may now determine the r.m.s. value of the noise voltage across a
resistor of R ohms at a temperature of T K over a bandwidth of ∆f.
 Mean-squared value of noise in R

17 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
Modeling a noisy resistor
 From the foregoing, it is clear that in so far as noise calculations are
concerned, we may model a resistor of R ohms at temperature T K
as follows.

18 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
Resistors in Series and in Parallel
(i) Series Connection

19 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
Superposition of PSD’s
 Let resistor R1 produce noise voltage n1(t) and R2 produce noise
voltage n2(t).
 Then the total power of the sum process

 But since the noise processes produced in R1 and R2 are

independent and zero-mean processes,

20 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise

 Thus, it is their powers (or the mean squared values) which get
added, and not the voltages.
 This means that, as shown in figure, in the equivalent circuit, it is the noise
power spectral densities to which superposition principle applies—not to
the noise voltages produced by the two resistors.

21 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
(ii) Parallel Connection

22 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Thermal Noise
 When two resistors are in series, it is their noise powers, or their
noise power spectral densities (PSD’s) in volt2/ Hz, which can be
added, and not their noise voltages.
 When two resistors are in parallel, it is their noise powers, or their
noise PSD’s in amp2 / Hz, which can be added—not their individual
noise currents.
 Thus, in a circuit with multiple noise sources which are independent,
the principle of superposition applies not to the r.m.s. voltages or
currents of the sources, but only to their mean-squared values or
power spectra.

23 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Numerical
 Find the r.m.s. value of the thermal noise voltage across a resistor of
1 MΩ at a temperature of 27oC if the measurement is made with an
instrument having a bandwidth of 104 Hz.
 Solution:

24 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Numerical
 A 10 kΩ and a 20 k Ω resistor are both at a room temperature of
27oC. For a 100 kHz bandwidth, determine the r.m.s. value of the
thermal noise voltage across (i) each one of them, (ii) their series
combination, and (iii) their parallel combination.
 Solution:

25 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Numerical

26 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Available Noise Power
 The maximum power transfer theorem tells us that maximum power
will be delivered by the source to the load resistance RL
 when RL equals R, the source resistance.

27 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Available Noise Power
 Under this condition, the load is said to be matched to the source
and the power delivered to RL under matched conditions, is given by

 Considering a resistor of R ohms as a thermal noise source as we

have,

28 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Noise Temperature of a Source
 The noise temperature of a source is defined as T:

 where, p is the available power from the source in a bandwidth (∆f)

Hz.
 It may be noted here that the source may be a thermal noise source
or it may be some other type.
 If it is thermal type,T will be the temperature of that source.
 If it is not thermal type, T may not have anything to do with the
actual temperature of the source.

29 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Shot Noise
 Another important source of internal noise is what is called the ‘shot
noise’.
 This is produced in electronic devices such as vacuum and
semiconductor diodes, photo-diodes, transistor, etc.
 It is due to the random emission of electrons from the cathode

Shot Noise in vacuum tubes

 In the case of vacuum tubes and due to the inherent randomness in
the diffusion of minority carriers and drift of majority carriers across
the junction in the case of semiconductor devices.

30 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Shot Noise
 Over a bandwidth of (∆f ) Hz, the mean-squared value of the shot
noise current is given by

 Where
𝐼𝑜 = 𝑁𝑞
N – total number of electrons
q – charge of an electron 1.6 X 10-19 coulomb

31 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Shot Noise
Shot Noise in Semiconductor Diodes
 Shot noise arises in the case of semiconductor diodes also, because
of the random nature of the number of minority carriers diffusing
across the junction
 And also of the generation and recombination of holes and electrons.
 An analysis of the shot noise in semiconductor diodes yields a
somewhat similar equation:

 Where ‘I’ is the dc current flowing across the p-n junction, expressed
in amperes
 I0 is the reverse saturation current in amperes.

32 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023

Partition Noise
 In multi-electrode devices like the vacuum triodes and pentodes as
well as the bipolar junction transistors, one more type of noise,
known as the ‘partition noise’, is generated.
 In triodes and pentodes, it arises due to the random distribution of
the electrons emitted by the cathode between the grids and the
anode or plate;
 And in the case of transistors, due to the random distribution
between the base and collector, of the charged carriers injected into
the base region.
 In supreheterodyne radio receivers, it is this partition noise which
makes the mixer stage the most noisy one.

33 Dr. R.K.Mugelan, Associate Professor, SENSE, VIT Vellore 01-03-2023