Hard-Limiter Intermodulation with Low Input Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Abstract

A simple, closed form expression is derived for the normalized power magnitude of major intermodulation (IM) products at the output of an ideal bandpass hard-limiter with low input signal-to-noise ratio,(S/N)_{i}. This expression together with no-noise results obtained by a previous author allows quick plotting of the no-noise and high-noise asymptotes of the IM product magnitude vs.(S/N)_{i}, for any number of equal-power, input CW signals. Lastly, it is shown that for many signals it may be advantageous to operate the limiter at a lower(S/N)_{i}in order to suppress the intermodulation distortion.