Electronic – I am looking for recommendations how to lower the noise in this preamplifier circuit

low-noise-amplifier

I have a circuit using MMBT3904T-7-F parts, operating at 100uA collector current, which is rather noisy. This is a preamp for the 475kHz ham band.

I need to stick with bipolar NPN.

How can I lower the noise in this circuit?

Spice sim circuit

Best Answer

I'd rethink the operating point:

enter image description here

I'd be inclined to run at 0.5mA or 1mA, judging from the right hand plot. The left-hand plot gives us no guidance, because your carrier/info/modulation will be 475KHz.

Your test circuit (grounded emitter) has no ability to reject power supply noise. Stick 1Kohm in that VDD line, and drop in 1,000uF cap. Your F3dB of 0.16Hz promises 60dB atten at 160Hz, 58dB at 120hz, and 52dB at 60Hz. Now you can trust what you see on the scope as being random noise.

Consider an adaptive-bias, so temperature changes and VDD changes are less of a problem:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab