Small bandwidth measurement of the noise voltage of batteries

The purpose of this paper is to measure the very small electrochemical noise voltage (about 10 nV) generated in batteries. The new method presented here is able to realize these measurements of the noise signal in an industrial environment. The technique we developed is based on a small part of the frequency noise spectrum between 3 and 30 Hz. As we will show this seems to offer a good compromise for applications in an industrial environment where a relatively high electrical background noise can be expected to exist. In the proposed measurement setup, we have included the possibility to discriminate between different kinds of noise voltages. This selectivity permits to find indications of different noise generating mechanisms in electrochemical systems, e.g. shot- and burst-noise sources. Measurements confirm the practicability of the proposed measurement setup. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.