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A minimum detectable signal is a signal at the input of a system whose power allows it to be detected over the background electronic noise of the detector system. It can alternately be defined as a signal that produces a signal-to-noise ratio of a given value m at the output.
Specific detectivity is given by =, where is the area of the photosensitive region of the detector, is the bandwidth, and NEP the noise equivalent power in units [W]. It is commonly expressed in Jones units ( c m ⋅ H z / W {\displaystyle cm\cdot {\sqrt {Hz}}/W} ) in honor of Robert Clark Jones who originally defined it.
At very low frequencies, you can think of the noise as becoming drift, although the mechanisms causing drift are usually distinct from flicker noise. One powerful technique involves moving the signal of interest to a higher frequency and using a phase-sensitive detector to measure it.
In that case, a fixed threshold level can be chosen that provides a specified probability of false alarm, governed by the probability density function of the noise, which is usually assumed to be Gaussian. The probability of detection is then a function of the signal-to-noise ratio of the target return. However, in most fielded systems ...
Noise-equivalent power (NEP) is a measure of the sensitivity of a photodetector or detector system. It is defined as the signal power that gives a signal-to-noise ratio of one in a one hertz output bandwidth. [1] An output bandwidth of one hertz is equivalent to half a second of integration time. [2] The units of NEP are watts per square root ...
The Fano factor can be viewed as a kind of noise-to-signal ratio; it is a measure of the reliability with which the waiting time random variable can be estimated after several random events. For a Poisson counting process , the variance in the count equals the mean count, so F = 1 {\displaystyle F=1} .
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If the noise has expected value of zero, as is common, the denominator is its variance, the square of its standard deviation σ N. The signal and the noise must be measured the same way, for example as voltages across the same impedance. Their root mean squares can alternatively be used according to: