Mikrosignal

Mikrosignal refers to an extremely small electrical, optical, or other measurable signal that lies at the low end of a system's dynamic range. The term is used across engineering disciplines to emphasize signal levels that require high sensitivity and careful noise control. While the exact thresholds vary by domain, mikrosignals are typically characterized by amplitudes that are near the noise floor of the measurement chain.

Handling mikrosignals usually requires a low-noise front end, including instrumentation amplifiers, chopper-stabilized or zero-drift amplifiers, shielded cabling, differential measurement, and meticulous grounding. Analog-to-digital conversion demands high-resolution ADCs and careful calibration to minimize quantization and drift. Digital processing may use filtering, oversampling, and averaging to improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Applications span biomedical sensing (electroencephalography and other microvolt-scale signals), scientific instrumentation (weak optical or photon-counting signals), MEMS and nanoscale sensing, environmental monitoring, and audio systems that operate near the limits of perceptibility.

Challenges include thermal and 1/f noise, electromagnetic interference, sensor drift, and nonlinearity of components. Design strategies aim to maximize signal integrity while preserving temporal and spectral information.

The term mikrosignal is not a formal standard, but a descriptive label used in technical literature to discuss low-amplitude signals across disciplines. Related concepts include low-noise design, signal conditioning, and precision measurement.