Investigating properties of white noise in the undergraduate laboratory

Abstract

This paper describes a simple noise circuit for the undergraduate physics laboratory. Students use this circuit to study the properties of electrical noise on a personal computer. This is made possible by using a data acquisition system that allows the experimenters to obtain large amounts of data on the computer, suitable for subsequent mathematical computations. Various properties such as mean, noise power, noise power density and the probability distribution of noise voltages are also explored.

Reducing noise by repetition: introduction to signal averaging

“…The term M k=1 v n (k)v n (l +k) represents the autocorrelation of band-limited Gaussian noise and its value depends upon the bandwidth. The higher the bandwidth, the higher the frequencies present in the noise, leading to rapid variations in the noise and admitting a narrower autocorrelation function [10]. After performing signal averaging, which acts as a low-pass filter, the higher frequencies are removed.…”