Automatic gain control for analog to digital converters

A direct-digital receiver architecture comprising:

• an input signal reception unit configured for receiving an analog input signal;
• an analog frontend configured for applying a variable gain factor to the analog input signal so as to produce a gain adjusted input signal;
• an analog to digital converter configured for converting the gain adjusted input signal to a corresponding digital signal comprising a plurality of digital samples;
• a gain level unit configured for determining said variable gain factor via monitoring of the corresponding digital signal;
• a gain scaling unit configured for determining a scale factor according to the variable gain factor;
• and
• a gain factor multiplier configured for multiplying the corresponding digital signal by the scale factor, thereby producing a scaled digital signal;
• an output dynamic range of the digital samples being equivalent to a dynamic range of the analog to digital converter plus a dynamic range of an analog front-end attenuator that precedes the analog to digital converter.