Wide dynamic range automatic gain control using feed forward and backward technique

This papers deals with implementation of software algorithm of an AGC technique having wide dynamic control range in burst communication. The proposed AGC mechanism consists of a microcontroller with built in ADC, pre & post attenuators, VGA and a RMS detector. Typically, RMS detectors are available with limited dynamic control range of 50-55 dB i.e., either from -10 to -60dBm or -30 to -80dBm. In this work, the dynamic range of such RMS detector has been widened by making an efficient use of pre attenuator. Dynamic range of 80dBis achieved using the proposed technique.