A Noise Temperature Measurement System for Mismatched Noise Sources

A measurement system is described which allows us to determine the noise temperature of mismatched noise sources with unknown reflection coefficients. The system consists of a null-balancing radiometer extended by a circuit to compensate for the reduced noise power emitted by the mismatched one-port. In this circuit, no passive nonreciprocal components are necessary. Special consideration is given to measurement errors that are caused by the correlation of the input and output noise waves of the radiometer preamplifiers. Several methods to eliminate these errors are described. Furthermore, a circuit is given by which the measurement range is extended down to 0 K without the use of cold reference noise sources. Finally, a practical setup, operating in the 20-40-MHz range, is described together with corresponding measurement results.