Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Serhii M Zhak

Rahul Sarpeshkar

Soumyajit Mandal

Michael W Baker

A system and technique for providing to flexible, programmable frequency estimators and spectrum analyzers that can operate over extremely large bandwidths and yet provide high spectral resolution are described. The system and technique may include a cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus for estimating a frequency and a bandwidth of signals proximate in frequency to a desired signal, a tunable filter coupled to an input of a receiver, and a tuner which receives a signal from said cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus and tunes the filter to filter out unwanted signals from the receiver.

Architectures for universal or software radio

A system and technique for providing to flexible, programmable frequency estimators and spectrum analyzers that can operate over extremely large bandwidths and yet provide high spectral resolution are described. The acquisition time and hardware complexity of one technique scale as O(N), where N denotes the number of frequency bins acquired. Embodiments are disclosed in which architectures are implemented using exponentially-tapered transmission lines and filter cascades.

An envelope detector system is disclosed for detecting an envelope in a system input signal. The envelope detector system includes an input node for receiving an input voltage signal, a transconducting amplifier for receiving the input voltage signal and producing an input current signal, a current mirror network for receiving the input current signal and for producing a current output signal, a capacitor for receiving the current output signal, and a rectifier output node for providing a rectifier output current signal. The capacitor is coupled to an input of the transconducting amplifier. The rectifier output current signal is fed into the current-mode wide-dynamic-range peak detector. The peak detector produces the envelope detector output current signal.

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Andover, MA, United States of America

Serhii M Zhak