Noise Figure Improvements using the µHILNATM Low Noise Amplifier

Noise Figure (NF) describes the amount of noise a component, amplifier, or an entire radio receive chain contributes to the RF signal being received. It can also be defined as the logarithmic unit (dB) derived from the ratio of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) into the device or circuit versus the SNR out of the device. High NF reduces receive clarity and intelligibility. Although passive components contribute some noise to a signal path, this whitepaper only deals with the NF of amplifiers and chains of amplifiers. This understanding is then used to demonstrate the improvement in receive quality from adding a low noise amplifier (LNA) to the antenna input (i.e., front end) of a receiver, such as the NuWaves μHILNATM LNA described in this whitepaper.