Vector or RMS for specific application

[no_lab]

Hello,

I am trying to measure the noise of the amplifier, to do so, I am taking the output of the amplifier, passing it through DAC and performing FFT on it. But while doing the FFT I have 2 options to do the averaging.

1) RMS

2) Vector

I see that while doing RMS averaging noise of the amplifier is an order higher than the vector averaging. Now the question is, which one is the right noise floor of the amplifier ?

[altenbach]

Any averaging reduces the noise, so if you want to actually measure the noise, why would you do averaging at all?

Averaging modes are explained here. (Click in the left column for details of each)

[no_lab]

You see this plot, belongs to one of the amplifier that I am using. Indicates the noise floor of the amplifier. Do you think, it is possible to obtain the smooth curve in frequency domain like this one, without averaging ? So back to the original question, In labview, to do a similar plot, which kind of averaging is reasonable ?

I have seen the page (in the link), did not help me much.