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Description Flicker noise is a natural phenomenon that appears wherever energy is dissipated. It occurs in electronic circuits but also in many other situations where energy is dissipated, such as in the audio spectrum of a drop of water boiling on a hot plate or in the sound of water in a small mountain stream.
The power density of flicker noise in the frequency domain is proportional to 1/f (flicker noise is also sometimes refered to as 1/f noise).
At a sufficiently high frequency, the power density of flicker noise becomes equal to thermal noise. This is called the corner frequency. At frequencies above the corner frequency, thermal noise dominates.
Since the device performance improvements in newer IC technologies are typically obtained through decreasing the device size while increasing current density, the 1/f noise in such devices increases and the corner frequency increases as well.
To reduce 1/f noise, you can:
- Shift the (wanted) signals to a higher frequency, preferably beyond the corner frequency
- Decrease the (dissipated) power density in devices
- Reduce the total power dissipatioin in devices, e.g. by changing to circuits without a DC bias current, such as passive mixers, pass gates etc.
ExercisesThis is where the exercises for this topic should be entered.