Significance of thermal noise

is the largest RMS voltage possible expressed in terms of its supply. (integrated across the bandwidth of interest) Noise sets the best possible SNR performance achievable

is the RMS noise

Resistors
+ R Vn2

in2

For R=

and T=300K (room temp)

MOSFETS

id2

Track and Hold

Most sampling circuit exhibit a track and hold behavior.

Settling error at t=T/2 (N=

For 1% error,

For proper design, T/2 is several time constants to ensure sample is properly settled. Settling error at T/2 1% 0.1% 0.01% N is usually 5-10. Required 4.6 6.9 9.2

The faster the sampling circuit, the smaller the RC time constant. If min R is the switch resistance, then C must decrease. As C decreases, kT/C noise goes up.

Noise and PSD

Two ways to look at noise 1. Continuous time 2. Discrete time Interested in instances of time where noise is frozen (sampled) on the output of the capacitor. There are two properties of the discrete time noise sequence 1) The variance (total power) and 2) the spectrum (uncorrelated in time white spectrum, correlated colored spectrum)

Total sampled noise We can calculate the total integrated thermal noise on the capacitor to be Shortcut: For single pole, NEB =

where

When the noise is sampled, its statistics does not change (variance does not change). These statistical averages are obtained from the PDF. And because of ergodicity, we can relate this to the time

averages and make use of Parsevals theorem and integrate across all frequency to obtain the total noise power (=mean-sq value). Equipartition theorem Each degree of freedom of a physical system in THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM holds an average energy of kT/2. If any active circuit drives the capacitor, then this trick does not work anymore.
R + vout

V n2

PSD of sampled noise There are three ways for us to find the PSD of the sampled noise

Qualitative If is small relative to T/2, samples show little correlation in time white spectrum. The time constant, , can be thought of as memory. If is large, previous sample value does not decay fast enough, so it carries forward to the next sample. Thus, samples in the vicinity will show correlation. If is small, previous value decays to zero and the next noise sample arrive. Thus, adjacent samples show no correlation.

Using the autocorrelation spectrum First, calculate the autocorrelation function of noise at the output of the RC filter. Then, calculate the spectrum by taking the discrete-time FT of the autocorrelation to give the power spectrum density. The calculation is performed with DT sequences i.e. it assumes that the noise is sampled at the end of the track phase and held constant in the hold phase. Any noise during within track phase is not taken into account. The reference [1] does account for the noise in the track phase, but in switched capacitor filters, only the sampled noise has an effect on the SNR.

Sx()=

where

. For N>3, the spectrum is white. Then the single-sided PSD is

Figure 1 Plot of X(f) normalized

Noise aliasing The final way of determining the spectrum of sampled noise is through aliasing. Conceptually, the noise in the hold mode, , is constructed by sampling the Vout at the very end of the track phase, and then holding that value for the duration of the hold phase (Figure 2). The PSD at Vout during the track phase is shaped by the RC filter and is equal to indicates double sided spectrum). (the caret

And sampling at a rate

produces

The spectrum is periodic with period

, hence, the frequency of interest is

or

for single-

sided. Everything outside is a repeat. We also know that the sampling period is much larger than the RC time constant. From before, the ratio between T/2 and is N. We can express this in terms of circuit quantities

Recall also that the effective noise bandwidth of the single-pole filter is

So, we can approximate with an effective rectangular spectrum with . And we know that the band (with interval fs/2) of frequencies around multiples of alias down to DC. We can calculate how many of these intervals downconvert to [-fs/2, fs/2) by taking

Therefore, if we want to find the total noise we just sum up the rectangles

More importantly is that, from Figure 3, we observe that the PSD of the sample noise, , is white because summing the pieces of spectrum that alias in the band of interest gives a flat spectrum (since N is large). We also see that sampling concentrates the full noise power of the switch resistance into the baseband of the sampling process.
(1-m)T Track Hold mT Track Hold

Vout(n)

Vout(n+1)

...
T

...
t

*
0

(1-m)T

...

...
t

Figure 2 Conceptual construction of sampled and held noise in TH circuit

Finally, to calculate the PSD we have to account for the zero-order hold. This involves convolving the impulse train ss(t) with the rect(t) function

where phase is

. The final single-sided spectrum after taking the hold

SRC -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2

fNEB=1/4RC
+3 +4 f

-4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 SS

fs

2fs

3fs

4fs

Sh

Figure 3 Accumulation of noise due to aliasing. N=7.

References
1. Ken Kundert, Simulating Switched-Capacitor Filters with SpectreRF, http://www.designersguide.org 2. Boris Murmann, Noise Analysis in Switched Capacitor Circuits, ISSCC 2011 Tutorial 3. BM,Thermal noise in TH circuits, JSSC Magazine Spring 2012 4. Energy and Power spectral densities, http://www.cours.polymtl.ca/ele2700/docs/Chap12CorinthBookDraft-final2.pdf