Wide Dynamic Range Preselectors

Crowding of the Military communication spectrum has aggravated the need for preselectors capable of receiving a low-level desired signal in the presence of a high-level adjacent channel signal. Described herein are two novel HF preselection approaches which appear eminently suitable to cope with this problem. Applicable to the frequency range of 2 to 30 Mc/s, one preselector employs parametric mixing and the other exploits the low loss properties of superconductivity. In addition to other advantageous features, both preselectors have demonstrated an outstanding dynamic range capability in the order of 140 dB. Each of the preselectors is evaluated as a conventiona1 filter. In addition, performance data of a high quality military receiver is compared with that obtained when the receiver is preceded by each of two preselectors. Considerable stress is placed on the use of crossmodulation characteristics as a more meaningful and precise measure of preselector performance.