An Experimental Investigation of the Characteristics of Certain Types of Noise

The results of an investigation of the effect of the band width on the effective, average, and peak voltages of several different types of noise are given for band widths up to 122 kilocycles. For atmospheric noise and that due to the thermal agitation of electric charge in conductors, both of which consist of a large number of overlapping pulses, the peak, average, and effective voltages were all proportional to the square root of the band width. For very sharp, widely separated, clean, noise pulses, the average voltage was independent of the band width and the peak voltage was directly proportional to the band width. For noise of a type falling between these two the effect of the band width depended upon the extent of the overlapping. The ratio of the peak to effective voltage of the noise due to the thermal agitation of electric charge in conductors was measured and found to be 4. The ratio of the average to effective voltage of this type of noise was found to be 0.85. The experiments showed that when a linear rectifier, calibrated by a continuous-wave signal having a known effective voltage, is used to measure the effective voltage of this type of noise the measurements should be increased by 2 decibel to obtain the correct result.