[Elecraft] P3 cw waterfall

[Walter Underwood]

Noise power is a one-sided distribution, so the average is positive. We don’t have negative noise power.

Ideally, it will average to a flat (white) distribution, but what we hear in the aether is not ideal. So we get a display that shows signals and less-random noise/interference.

wunder
K6WRU
Walter Underwood
CM87wj
http://observer.wunderwood.org/ (my blog)

> On Dec 9, 2015, at 5:23 PM, Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed,12/9/2015 5:05 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> Can you explain "averages to zero"?  I would think that random noise
>> would average to something non-zero and then be comparitively reduced by
>> the averaging interval, and thus more like the normal noise level over
>> sqrt(N).  Perhaps this is then reliably below the threshold for any
>> color to appear, which would make it effectively zero.
> 
> Perhaps I chose my words poorly. What happens when you set averaging and levels to optimum is that any random noise averages itself out (BECAUSE it's statistically random), so you're left with whatever weak signals and non-random noise is on the band.
> 
> 73, Jim K9YC
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