The pressure ripple in most hydraulic systems is the root cause of their noise and vibration. This paper reduced the pressure ripple using side branch hose for an axial piston pump applied to small excavator. First, in calculating open area, a new method using groove area of valve plate is proposed. Simulation model in AMESim environment is developed to verify proposed method, find effective length and diameter of branch hose. Finally, the comparisons with experiment results show that the proposed method is more effective than previous method in reducing the pressure ripple.