A complete cure for electrical noise
Sorry, just dreaming. There isn’t one. The small particle-like compo-
nents of electricity, called electrons, vibrate in a random fashion
powered by the surrounding heat energy. In conductors, electrons are
very mobile and carry a type of electrical charge that we have termed
negative. The resulting negative charge is balanced out by an equal
number of fixed particles called protons, which carry a positive charge
(see Figure 5).
The overall effect of the electron mobility is similar to the random
surges that occur in a large crowd of people jostling around waiting to
enter the stadium for the Big Match. If, at a particular time, there
happens to be more electrons or negative charges moving towards the
Figure 5
Equal charges result in
no overall voltage
Figure 6
A random voltage has been generated
left-hand end of a piece of material then that end would become more
negative, as shown in Figure 6. A moment later, the opposite result
may occur and the end would become more positive (Figure 7).
These effects give rise to small random voltages in any conductor, as
we have seen.
Figure 7
The opposite effect is equally likely
Binary - the way micros count
Thermal noise
The higher the temperature, the more mobile the electrons, the greater the random voltages and the more electrical noise is present.
A solution:
High temperature = high noise
so:
Low temperature = low noise.
Put the whole system into a very cold environment by dropping it in
liquid nitrogen (about -200°C) or taking it into space where the
‘shade’ temperature is about -269°C. The cold of space has created
very pleasant low noise conditions for the circuits in space like the
Hubble telescope. On Earth most microprocessors operate at room
temperature. It would be inconvenient, not to mention expensive, to
surround all our microprocessor circuits by liquid nitrogen. And even
if we did, there is another problem queuing up to take its place.
Partition noise
Let’s return to the Big Match. Two doors finally open and the fans pour
through the turnstiles. Now we may expect an equal number of people
to pass through the two entrances as shown in Figure 8 but in reality
this will not happen. Someone will have trouble finding their ticket;
friends will wait for each other; cash will be offered instead of a ticket;
someone will try to get back out through the gate to reach another
section of the stadium. As we can imagine, the streams of people may
be equal over an hour but second by second random fluctuations will
occur.
Electrons don’t lose their tickets but random effects like temperature,
voltage and interactions between adjacent electrons have a very
similar effect.
Figure 8
The fans enter
the stadium
A single current of, say, 1 A can be split into two currents of 0.5 A when measured over the long-term, but when examined carefully, each will contain random fluctuations. This type of electrical noise is called partition noise or partition effect. The overall effect is similar to the thermal noise and, between them, would cause too much noise and hence would rule out the use of a 10-digit system.
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