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

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, . 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. , 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 in order to suppress the intermodulation distortion.