On 07/11/2012 03:49 PM, ed breya wrote: > That which is more fundamental to the problem is the unavoidable (at room > temperature) noise from the resistors. Even a "perfect" resistor with zero > tempco has noise, so if you use resistors to measure current with a > high-precision voltmeter, eventually you reach a resolution where the noise > becomes dominant. If you reduce the bandwidth by averaging, the precision > should > reach the basic stability of the resistor - but the (in)stability itself may > be > viewed as noise of very low frequency - always too low to filter out unless > you > have a very long time. > > The resistors chosen for DMM current ranges may just be rational choices and > compromises for the types of performance to be expected under normal usage and > conditions, and considering the noise limits to resolution, versus the cost of > extremely low tempco sample resistors.
I may be off here, but I doubt that thermal (Johnson) noise would limit the
precision of current readings.
As an example - consider using a one ohm resistor to measure 1 mA. The voltage
corresponding to 1 mA is 1 mV. Johnson noise is given as:
en = sqrt(4*k*T*R*B)
or about
en ~ 0.13 * sqrt(R) nv / sqrt(Hz) at 300 K.
A one ohm resistor in a 1 Hz bandwidth would be 0.13 nV or 0.13 ppm of the 1 mV
reading.
Thermals in the circuit could easily reach uv levels as others have suggested.
Another limitation might be resistor excess noise - a 1/f noise source that can
be much larger than the thermal noise - but I would think that engineers at HP
would pick a resistor technology (bulk metal foil) that minimizes that noise
source.
Best regards,
--
Bob Smither, PhD Circuit Concepts, Inc.
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