A VERY LOW NOISE, HIGH STABILITY, VOLTAGE REFERENCE FOR HIGH SENSITIVITY NOISE MEASUREMENTS

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate that by exploiting the non linear characteristic of low noise PN junction diodes, a very low noise, high stability voltage reference can be obtained starting from a conventional solid state series voltage reference. In order to obtain such a result, a series connection of N identical diodes is supplied in the forward region of the I-V characteristic by means of a proper resistance. While the DC voltage drop across the diodes can be a large fraction of the voltage supplied by the reference, the noise introduced by the reference itself is reduced by a much larger factor because of the low value of the small signal equivalent resistance of the diodes. In its simplest implementation, such a voltage source would suffer from a relatively high temperature dependence of the supplied voltages because of the intrinsic properties of PN junctions. However, by resorting to a proper temperature control circuit, high stability can be obtained. As an example, by employing an AD586 voltage reference and with N = 4, a 2.560 V reference has been obtained with a stability over temperature better that 50 μ V /° C and a voltage noise as low as 2 × 10−15, 6 × 10−17 and 1.5 × 10−17 V 2/ Hz at 100 mHz, 1 Hz and for frequencies larger than 10 Hz, respectively.