Apparatus for and method of optimizing the performance of a radio frequency receiver in the presence of interference

A communications receiver, comprising:

• a low noise amplifier (LNA) for amplifying a received signal so as to generate an LNA output signal, said LNA having M gain setting modes of operation, the gain of said LNA determined in response to an LNA gain control command having a plurality of log2M control lines, wherein M is a positive integer;
• a mixer for multiplying said LNA output signal with a local oscillator signal so as to generate a mixer output signal, said mixer having N gain setting modes of operation, the gain of said mixer determined in response to a mixer gain control signal command;
• a detector for recovering, from said mixer output signal, information originally transmitted, said detector comprising:
• a limiter adapted to limit the amplitude swing of a signal input thereto;
• a discriminator adapted to generate an output voltage proportional to frequency deviations in the output of said limiter;
• and
• a data slicer operative to apply a threshold to the output voltage of said discriminator so as to recover digital data therefrom;
• and
• a controller operative to generate said gain control command to said LNA and said mixer gain control command to said mixer, said controller adapted to set the gain setting of said LNA and of said mixer to one of a plurality of gain states, wherein each gain state consists of a unique combination of LNA gain setting and mixer gain setting.