Signal and Noise Power Spectra in Superregenerative Oscillators

Abstract

This paper presents a method to quantify noise in superregenerative oscillators. A frequency domain technique, originally intended to determine the signal response, can also be used to determine the noise response. This paper focuses on the procedure required to achieve this. Signal and noise spectra are obtained and their shape is compared. Finally, signal-to-noise ratio is computed for different quench signals.

SNR Measurement of Superregenerative Oscillators

“…By using superposition, this technique can also be applied when the input is a combination of sinusoids and, as is explained in [17], to a continuous input spectrum such as that of white noise.…”

“…In [17] a method to compute signal and noise power spectra in SRO was presented. Based on this method, we are going to show an experimental method to determine the SNR of an SRO based on the observation of the information given by a spectrum analyzer (SA).…”

“…So, the total SRO signal output power taking into account both sides of the spectrum is given by [17]…”

“…As was shown in [17], the SNR at the output of the SRO can be computed in a straightforward way from (11) and (6):…”

“…Further results have been given lately in [12]- [16]. In this paper, we build on a method to quantify noise in SR receivers [17] which is, in turn, based on the frequency domain analysis technique [18], to experimentally compute SNR of an SR receiver.…”