As part of the development of a spectrally uniform room-temperature absolute radiometer, we have studied the electrical noise of several bulk chip thermistors in order to estimate the noise floor and optical dynamic range. Understanding the fundamental limits of the temperature sensitivity leads inevitably to studying the noise background of the complex electro-thermal system. To this end, we employ a measurement technique based on alternating current synchronous demodulation. Results of our analysis show that the combination of a low-current noise Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) preamplifier together with chip thermistors is optimal for our purpose, yielding a root mean square noise temperature of 2.8 μK in the frequency range of 0.01 Hz to 1 Hz.

Topics
Electric currents, Linear filters, Demodulators, Field effect transistors, Amplifiers, Resistors, Electronic noise, Signal processing, Resistivity measurements, Optical instruments
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2017
U.S. Government
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