Understanding Noise Figure And How To Improve It With Low Noise Amplifiers

Noise Figure is defined as the amount of noise a component, amplifier, or an entire radio receive chain contributes to the RF signal being received, and is also 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. This application note will deal with the noise figure specifically for amplifiers and chains of amplifiers, and demonstrates how to improve this NF by adding a low noise amplifier to the antenna input of a receiver. Download the full paper for more information.