Inherent Signal-to-Noise Ratio Limitations of Charge-Coupled Device Pseudonoise Matched Filters

Inherent SNR limitations of CCD pseudonoise matched filters (PNMF) due to fat-zero noise, input circuit noise, thermal dark current, reset noise, and charge-transfer inefficiency are investigted. It is shown that for practicable integrated circuits using buried-channel CCD´s, these device limitations will rarely degrade performance enough to compete with the code correlation self-noise.