• Skip to main content
  • Skip to search
  • Skip to footer
Cadence Home
  • This search text may be transcribed, used, stored, or accessed by our third-party service providers per our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.

  1. Community Forums
  2. Custom IC Design
  3. Could anyone explain this sampled noise simulation resu...

Stats

  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 9
  • Subscribers 125
  • Views 17170
  • Members are here 0
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Could anyone explain this sampled noise simulation result

SpiceMonkey
SpiceMonkey over 4 years ago

Hi, I'm learning sampled circuit noise simulaton, pss+pnoise, start with the simplest S/H circuit.

- Simulator, Spectre 19.1

- TestBench (fig1), a switch-capacitor S/H circuit, fs 400KHz >> f(RC-EBW) 27KHz, no alising should happen. (r=920K, c=10p)

- Pnoise Setup (fig2), sampled noise, sampled phase, 2 outputs with Vc and Vn2

- Results (fig3). For density, Vc is twice larger than Vn2; while for EBW, Vn2 is twice larger than Vc.

Though the total noise of Vc and Vn2 are same, but the bandwidth and density are different.

I think Vn2 is more reasonable, the densisty and bandwidth are exactly what I calculate, but how to explain Vc? Could anyone help? thank you!

Pnoise

  • Cancel
  • Andrew Beckett
    Andrew Beckett over 4 years ago

    It's aliasing. See the rather similar question and my explanation here: Noise Figure of track and hold circuit

    Is this some university project that you're both doing? Or is it some wild coincidence?

    Andrew

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • SpiceMonkey
    SpiceMonkey over 4 years ago in reply to Andrew Beckett

    Thank you Andrew. They are indeed the same question and it's a coincidence..

    Now I konw aliasing happen in this case, but I can't understand clearly the principle behind this. it's wide-band noise when switch is open, but it's band limited noise when closing, and it seems that dutycycle has some effects. Could you explain this more:

    "the output noise is higher because of the sampling of the wide-band thermal noise into the band up to the Nyquist frequency"

    Thank you!

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • ShawnLogan
    ShawnLogan over 4 years ago in reply to SpiceMonkey

    Dear  SpiceMonkey,

    SpiceMonkey said:
    . it's wide-band noise when switch is open, but it's band limited noise when closing, and it seems that dutycycle has some effects.

    If you had a chance to review the prior post that Andrew provided a link to whose question was essentially the same as yours, I included a file in that response where I tried to show the impact of sampling and why the aliasing was occurring. Did you happen to view it and did it help to provide any insight into your question? The file is at URL:

    noise_figure_nose_figure_sampled_sml_081521.pdf

    In direct to your question, the band limiting you mention is after the switch and hence will not limit the aliasing. In order to eliminate the aliasing, the bandwidth of the signal before the switching action must have a bandwidth  of much less than the switch activation frequency. Hence, in your case, it appears the switching frequency is 400 kHz. Hence the bandwidth of the signal applied to the switch input must be much less than 200 kHz to prevent any significant aliasing. With no capacitor prior to the switch, there is nothing band limiting the signal and hence significant aliasing is occurring. You note the following:

    SpiceMonkey said:
    (r=920, c=10p)

    However, you then indicate the cutoff frequency of the RC product is 27 kHz. Am I understanding this correctly? It seems to me that this only provides a first order lowpass filter with a corner frequency of 1/(2*pi*920*10e-12) = 17.3 MHz - far greater than 27 kHz. With a 920 ohm resistor, to get a 27 kHz first order lowpass filter cutoff frequency requires a capacitor of 6.4 nF.

    I would suggest you try analyzing the noise in a modified circuit where you move the capacitor to before the switch, change its value to 6.4 nF so as to provide a 27 kHz first order lowpass filter cutoff frequency prior to the switch. Since 27 kHz is just under a factor of 10 less than 200 kHz (half the 400 kHz switching frequency), the aliasing will be far less. You can compare the two spectra and hopefully, this will provide you some added insight.

    Shawn

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • SpiceMonkey
    SpiceMonkey over 4 years ago in reply to ShawnLogan

    Thank you ShawnLogan!

    Resistor is 920K rather than 920 posted before. I have revised the post. You are correct! If I move the capacitor prior to the switch, then get the 4KTR density.

    Now I know that 0.5/400k (the time of switch being closing) is too short to establish a signal of 27k. I have have read your PDF, it explains the aliasing well, thank you again!

    Im still trying to understand the principle behind this, quantitatively, maybe something about both "correlated" and "aliasing".

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • ShawnLogan
    ShawnLogan over 4 years ago in reply to SpiceMonkey

    Dear SpiceMonkey,

    SpiceMonkey said:
    Resistor is 920K rather than 920 posted before. I have revised the post.

    Ahah! That makes more sense now to me - thank you for updating your post! However, my computation of 920K and 10 pF provides a first order low-pass filter cutoff frequency (-3 dB) of 17.3 kHz. I think your post suggests the -3 dB corner is 27 kHz.

    SpiceMonkey said:
    f(RC) 27KHz, no alising should happen. (r=920K, c=10p)

    Am I misinterpreting your data? 

    SpiceMonkey said:
    ou are correct! If I move the capacitor prior to the switch, then get the 4KTR density.

    Excellent and great! Thank you for modifying your schematic and re-running the simulation!

    SpiceMonkey said:

    have have read your PDF, it explains the aliasing well, thank you again!

    Im still trying to understand the principle behind this, quantitatively, maybe somtting about both "correlated" and "aliasing"

    I am glad the document provided you some insight SpiceMonkey - great!

    With respect to your last comment concerning an understanding of the quantitative principle and the terms "correlated" and "aliasing", I must admit I am not fully understanding what you are looking for. I'll make an attempt to see if this helps at all....

    You may consider the sampling switch as multiplying the analog signal by a series of time-delayed impulses. As this is a multiplication process in the time-domain, it represents a convolution operation of the two Fourier transforms (i.e. the Fourier transform of the signal and the Fourier transform for the series of sample pulses) in the frequency domain. A property of the sample function delayed by some value of tau is to place a copy of the signal's spectrum centered about the frequency corresponding to the frequency of 1/tau. Hence, if there are a series of impulses that periodically sample the analog signal every t= Ts, the analog spectrum of your signal is translated to appear at multiples of the frequency corresponding to Ts. Mathematically, this means the resulting spectrum of the sampled signal is from reference [1]:

    I hope this provides a bit more insight consistent with what you were looking for!

    Shawn

    Reference [1]: ece-research.unm.edu/.../sample.pdf

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • SpiceMonkey
    SpiceMonkey over 4 years ago in reply to ShawnLogan

    Thank you! 

    Effectice Bandwidth of the rectangle, with hight = 4KTR, area = KT/C 

    EBW=(KT/C)/(4KTR)=1/4RC=1/(4*920k*10p)=27.17k, sorry for ambiguousness.

    Now I'm trying to understand this, Noise Analysis in Switched-Capacitor Circuits, correlation is mentioned, page 32.

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • SpiceMonkey
    SpiceMonkey over 4 years ago

    From Tutorial of Noise Analysis in Switched-Capacitor Circuits, page 37, I reprodece the same results in Matlab.

    Fullscreen 8156.SH_noise.txt Download
    clc;clear;
    fs=400e3;R=920e3;C=10e-12;T=300;K=1.38e-23;duty=0.5;
    N=duty/fs/(R*C);
    syms f;
    X(f)=2/fs * K*T/C * (1-exp(-2*N)) / (1-2*exp(-N)*cos(2*pi*f/fs)+exp(-2*N));
    fplot(X(f),[1,10*fs/2])
    set(gca,'xscale','log')

    If possible, is anyone could explain this "intuition", page 32

    - RC<0.5/fs, little correlation, whilte spectrum;

    - RC>0.5/fs, significant correlation, colored spectrum.

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • ShawnLogan
    ShawnLogan over 4 years ago in reply to SpiceMonkey

    Dear SpiceMonkey,,

    It appears the document you are referring to is not a Cadence publication. Nevertheless, I did examine the document and specifically page 32. The author shows exactly what is meant by "correlation" graphically on the author's following two pages (33 and 34). For small RC time constants with respect to the sample period, each sample of the noise is not well correlated to the prior sample or following sample since the RC time constant settling occurs very quickly relative to the switching period. However, if the RC time constant is large with respect to the sample period (the author chose a ratio of 1 to shown on page 34), then the relatively long RC settling will prevent the prior sample, present sample, and following sample from varying significantly from one another. Hence, there is a high degree of correlation between the three samples. Contrast this to the example on page 33 where the ratio of sampling period to the RC time constant is 10. The settling time in this case does allow the prior, present and following samples to differ significantly from each other and hence they are not as well correlated.

    Does this help SpiceMonkey?

    Shawn

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel
  • SpiceMonkey
    SpiceMonkey over 3 years ago in reply to ShawnLogan

    Thank you ShanwLogan and I'm sorry for late reply.

    it takes me long time to re-leran the basic theories... and try to understand them intuitively rather than mathmaticaly..

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Cancel

Community Guidelines

The Cadence Design Communities support Cadence users and technologists interacting to exchange ideas, news, technical information, and best practices to solve problems and get the most from Cadence technology. The community is open to everyone, and to provide the most value, we require participants to follow our Community Guidelines that facilitate a quality exchange of ideas and information. By accessing, contributing, using or downloading any materials from the site, you agree to be bound by the full Community Guidelines.

© 2025 Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy
  • Cookie Policy
  • US Trademarks
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information