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However, there are applications where two receiver chains are required, and they are also known as receiver channels. Most often a receiver channel refers to a particular frequency band. Quite often, the antenna element can act as the preselector filter, because it might have a narrow-band response. For example, you don't want your cell phone to pick up air-traffic control radar. The resulting lower frequency is called the intermediate frequency IF), because it is somewhere between the RF frequency and the baseband frequency.Ī preselector filter is used to keep stray radiation from saturating a receiver. The system must provide a signal to mix down the RF, this is called the local oscillator (because it is local to the system). When a receiver uses a mixer (as in a superheterodyne receiver), we refer to the input frequency as the RF frequency. Being a microwave engineer, we almost never have to get our hands dirty at the baseband frequency, that is some other Dude's problem!
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This is almost never a true microwave frequency, it could be an audio frequency, as in a radio. The baseband is the frequency at which the information you want to process is. Superheterodyne receivers (separate page)ĭual-channel receivers (separate page, new for July 2008!)ĭynamic range (new for September 2010!) Receiver terminology Here's a clickable index to our growing content on microwave receivers: So many microwave engineers spell it "reciever" it ain't funny! But before you design a receiver, learn to spell the word.
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The most common receiver architecture by far is the superheterodyne. What's a microwave receiver? It is used to amplify the weak signal that is gathered by the antenna in a radar, radio or other communications system or sensor. Click here to go to our page on receiver blocking (new for July 2011!)Ĭlick here to go to our page on distortion measurementsĬlick here to go to our page on noise figureĬlick here to go to our page on low noise amplifiers (LNAs)Ĭlick here to go to our page on cascade analysis