A debate came up at work: what happens to the wanted signal when an interferer pushes the LNA into compression? Let’s try it! 🙂
Using A LOT of attenuation, I merged a 7MHz carrier (my wanted signal) with a stronger 25MHz interfering carrier. Stepping up the amplitude on the 25MHz signal, finally pushes the amplifier into compression: it’s gain drops and it becomes highly unlinear. Mixed products of the two carriers appears, as well as the 2nd harmonic of the interferer.
The 7Mhz carrier is still there, but since the amplifier now has less gain, it drops in amplitude.
Any #hamradio operator has experienced this on a crowded 40m band at night, in fact even worse, because numerous powerful stations mix and creates a lot of spurious noise on transceivers with low intermodulation performance.
#rfengineering #rfengineer #hamradio #hamr #electronics #electronicsengineering #testandmeasurement #siglent #minicircuits