Experimental determination of the kurtosis of RF noise in microwave low-noise devices

The degree of the Gaussian nature of the white noise present in microwave low-noise devices is experimentally investigated. The chosen experimental technique consists of simultaneously digitizing four versions of the noise which are amplified by four parallel independent amplifiers. The four independent signals are then used to compute the second, and, to a good approximation, the fourth moment of the noise. The ratio of the fourth moment to the square of the second moment is the kurtosis of the noise. Gaussian processes are characterized by a kurtosis equal to 3. A deviation from this value gives an indication about the degree of non-Gaussian nature of the noise. By using this technique, the effect of the additive noise introduced by the amplifiers is strongly reduced. In our experiments, the degree of the Gaussian nature of the white noise of some microwave devices is measured in the frequency range from 100 to 500 MHz, In all the investigated devices, the kurtosis is found to be very close to 3. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.