11/21/2014

datasheet - Noise and what does V/Hz actually mean? - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
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Noise and what does V/Hz actually mean?

Noise figures in (opamp) datasheets are in expressed in V/Hz, but
1. Where does this unit come from, why the square root? and how should I pronounce it?
2. How should I interpret it?
3. I know lower is better, but will a noise figure that doubles also double the trace width on my
scope?
4. Is this value useful in calculating signal to noise ratio? Or what fun calculations can I do with this
number?
5. Is noise always expressed in V/Hz?
noise

datasheet

theory

edited May 20 '12 at 9:17

stevenvh
108k
8
330

547

asked May 20 '12 at 9:04

jippie
20.5k
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101

Dave Eevblog Jones explains the V/Hz unit in this video: EEVblog #528 Opamp Input Noise Voltage Tutorial
jippie Oct 6 '13 at 15:53

2 Answers
"Volt per square root hertz".
Noise has a power spectrum, and as you might expect the wider the spectrum the more noise
you'll see. That's why the bandwidth is part of the equation. The easiest is to illustrate with the
equation for thermal noise in a resistor:
v

= 4kT f
R

where k is Boltzmann's constant in joules per kelvin, and T is temperature in kelvin. f is the
bandwidth in Hz, just the difference between maximum and minimum frequency.
The left hand side is the expression for power: voltage squared over resistance. If you want to
know the voltage you rearrange:

v = 4kT Rf

That's why you have the square root of the bandwidth. If you would express the noise in terms
of power or energy you wouldn't have the square root.
All noise is frequency related, but energy spectra may differ. White noise has an equal power
across all frequencies. For pink noise, on the other hand, noise energy decreases with
frequency. Flicker noise is therefore also called 1/f noise. In that case bandwidth in itself is
meaningless.
The left graph shows the flat spectrum of white noise, the right graph shows pink noise
decaying 3dB/octave:

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/32257/noise-and-what-does-v-%E2%88%9Ahz-actually-mean

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11/21/2014

datasheet - Noise and what does V/Hz actually mean? - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

You can make noise visible on an oscilloscope, but you can't measure it that way. That's
because what you can see is the peak value, what you need is the RMS value. The best thing
you're getting out of it is that you can compare two noise levels, and estimate one is higher
than the other. To quantify noise you have to measure its power/energy.
edited May 20 '12 at 17:27

answered May 20 '12 at 9:29

stevenvh
108k
8
330
547

It is "volts per square root hertz", "joules", "kelvin" (all in lowercase, except if they start a sentence) and "3
dB/octave" (with a space between the numeric value and unit symbol). See Tables 1 and 3 in
physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html , and #5 ("meters per second" in example) and #15 in
physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html Telaclavo May 20 '12 at 12:07
@Telaclavo - I know! :-) But I sometimes make the mistake because I also know (some people make errors against
that) that the abbreviation for a unit derived from a person's name is indeed with a capital letter. Hence the
confusion. I'll fix it. stevenvh May 20 '12 at 17:26
'flicker noise' = 'pink noise'? You base your explanation on thermal noise in a resistor, can I compare R and T with
input impedance of the opamp and the chip's temperature? (my feeling says 'no', but I don't know why). jippie
Jun 17 '12 at 18:04
@jippie - Yes, flicker noise is pink. The T is obviously the chip's temperature, but R isn't about the input impedance,
which in fact may be very high, like 10 . It's about resistances in the device, where the free movement of charge
carriers cause the noise. That's required, otherwise an infinite resistance would cause an infinite noise and that
doesn't happen. Otherwise that 10 input impedance would cause no less than 18 mV RMS noise over the audio
bandwidth. stevenvh Jun 18 '12 at 5:18
12

12

note that if your spectrum measures W/octave instead of W/Hz, those two graphs will be tilted counterclockwise, and
pink noise plot will be flat. endolith Apr 24 at 18:48

When talking noise figures, we're not always talking about voltages. Often, we look at power
instead. A power spectral density plot shows us how this power is distributed among
frequencies. Integrated over the entire range of frequencies is of course the total power
produced, expressed in watts, so the integrand is commonly expressed in units watts per hertz.
While the total power can be a useful measure for the amount of noise, the same is not true for
voltages. Such a plot would be zero everywhere because it produces no net voltage, only
variations. This variance is expressed as the signal squared, i.e. in units V, corresponding
neatly to the power spectral density discussed earlier: power is proportional to the voltage
squared.
If you would see how the voltage variance is distributed among frequencies, you would use the
units volt squared per hertz. You can convert the variance back to signal strength by taking the
square root: V/Hz. Both are used and both mean the same thing.
answered May 20 '12 at 18:39
Marcks Thomas
150
3

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