Noise temperature: At a pair of terminals, the temperature of a passive system having an available noise power per unit bandwidth at a specified frequency equal to that of the actual terminals of a network.

The noise temperature of a simple resistor is the actual temperature of that resistor. The noise temperature of a diode may be many times the actual temperature of the diode. That is, we could replace the diode with a resister and place that resister to the equivalent temperature to generate the same level of the noise. Similarly, we can model a terrestrial antenna to have a noise temperature of 290K if the noise level of the resister at 290K (=16.8C) is the same as the noise level of the antenna. (7/16/2006)

Noise

Rauschtemperatur