Multiple-Carrier Behavior of a Frequency-Selective Ferrite Limiter

The ferrite limiter is a device which has the property of independently limiting two or more RF carriers if they are spaced by several megacycles from each other. This property may have utility in communication satellites as a multiple access tool or for minimizing the effects of jamming signals. The introductory section describes the device, its limiting action, and mode of operation in a commercial or military communications satellite. The body of the paper summarizes the measurements taken to determine the communications performance of the device. Specifically, measurements covering the steady state and dynamic bandwidth, the limiting action for one and two FM carriers, the phase linearity, and the crosstalk between two FM carriers are presented. The measured performance of the device was in reasonable agreement with performance predicted from a simplified analytic model. Measurements found the device to be essentially distortionless for a single wideband FM signal. With two carriers present, the limiting factor of performance was found to be coherent crosstalk.