Selective Sampling Versus Attenuation for Interference Mitigation in Broadband Receivers

In a filterless broadband receiver, time selective sampling (SS) is a method for mitigating interference effects by time sampling the amplified input (message plus interference) signal and discarding all samples that are big enough to be distorted. A consequence is that a longer total sampling time is necessary to compensate for the discarded samples. An alternative technique is to reduce amplifier gain and thereby reduce distortion. This also requires a longer total sampling time to make up for lost signal-to-noise. This brief compares the two techniques using a simplified analysis that is verified by comparison to simulation. The analysis provides insight into how the performance of each technique depends on interference power, noise, nonlinearity, and message power. SS takes significantly less time than attenuation to achieve equally accurate message extraction. For large interference levels the difference can be an order of magnitude.