Impact of Thermal Noise on Communication System Performance

Thermal noise is always present in the electronic circuits due to the vibration of charge carriers within circuits conductors that is directly proportional to the device temperature. In most cases preventing thermal noise is impossible, it is very important to evaluate the impact of this type of noise on the performance of communication systems and main parameters such as bit error rate (BER). The evaluation will help to properly design the communication transmission and receiving systems by evaluation the contribution of the total power noise produced by thermal noise. In practice this noise effect can be reduced by reducing the temperature of operation or reducing the electrical circuits resistance value of the devices as thermal noise is generated by the real part impedance only of the electronic components.The thermal noise is proportional to the temperature and frequency bandwidth, but the Impact of this noise on the overall performance of the system is varying depending on the system design, communication channel, modulation, the levels of signal to noise ratio (SNR) and BER.