Limiting of signals in random noise

Abstract

The effect of ideal bandpass limiting on a signal lying in narrowband Gaussian noise is analyzed. General analytic expressions for the limiter output components are derived using an integral representation for the limiter characteristic. This method allows retention of the phases of all the signals and the intermodulation products at the limiter output, which are destroyed in the characteristic-function method generally used in limiter studies. Expressions for the desired signals and intermodulation product amplitudes are obtained for the case when the limiter input consists of three angle-modulated sinusoids and noise. The analysis is extended to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</tex> modulated sinusoids plus noise, and approximate expressions for the signal, intermodulation product, and noise terms are derived. Numerical results are presented for the signal suppression and the limiter output signal amplitudes for the case of three input signals, two of equal amplitude.