Calibration of Noise Source - how to ?

Hi, I recently acquired an hp 8970A Noise Figure Meter but w/o noise source. I have a homebuild noise source as described in DUBUS magazine for the PANFI some years ago and a hp 346C which was said to be defective (however it still seems to produce some noise).

Is there any way to 'calibrate' such a noise source to at least some tenths of a dB?

Does it work to measure noise figure of a (pre-)amp with a calibrated noise source and then use the other noise source and adjust the ENR setting in the 8970A until you get same reading compared to the calibrated noise source?

Any comments are welcome

Regards EW

Reply to
Ernst Wawrzik
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yes,

or....

if you have a calibrated noise source available, you can measure the noise out of it and compare that to the noise out of your source... I tknik the 8907 has a power mter mode as well that you could use for this..

or use a spectrum analyzer with a pre-amp..

Note, the noise out of your homemade source will probably not be as flat across a wide freq range as the HP one...

Mark

Reply to
Mark

The ENR of a noise source is the available excess noise power divided by the available thermal noise power in dB and therefore depends on the noise source reflection coefficients fired and un-fired so strictly these have to be measured and the observed comparative (one source vs the standard source using a low noise pre-amp) corrected. Dick

Reply to
rqlhgl

Sorry if this has been mentioned. I have not followed the thread. I have used a few of the Micronetics noise sources. They have a few calibration documents on their site for their equipment. Don't know if they will help you but here is one link (there are others.)

http://www.micr>

Reply to
Nitro

Thanks to all of you for the information given. Ernst

Mark:

Reply to
Ernst Wawrzik

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