Noise figure measurements on nonlinear devices
Alain Geens, Yves Rolain · IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · 2001
A study of the effect of a cubic nonlinearity on the Y-factor method for measuring noise figure is performed. By hypothesis, the Y-factor technique does not take nonlinearities into account. It is shown that the presence of the nonlinearity largely influences the measured noise figure value. An alternative, single-tone noise figure measurement setup is proposed to correct the problem.