This design note introduces signal chain noise analysis for RF-to-Digital receivers. It describes the various components in the signal chain, such as mixers, low-noise amplifiers, and demodulators, and how to use them to achieve the best performance.
Designers of signal receiver systems often need to perform cascaded chain analysis of system performance from the antenna all the way to the ADC. Noise is a critical parameter in the chain analysis because it limits the overall sensitivity of the receiver.
The document addresses the translation between various units used by components in the chain: namely the RF, IF/baseband, and digital (ADC) sections. It provides formulas for converting noise figure (NF) to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and vice versa to optimize system topology.
The total theoretical SNR calculated for the example is 65.5dB.