Posts tagged automatic-gain-control

For example, in a radio receiver you could receive the signals with an extreme variety of amplitude at the antenna. This means that the gain of intermediate amplifier stages would need to have an enormous dynamic range,otherwise the weakest signal wouldn't be amplified enough (if the gain were too low) or the strongest signal would saturate the amplifier or the later processing stages (e.g. the demodulator).

A solution is to vary the gain of those stages depending on how strong the received RF signal is, so that the demodulator could work with a signal with a more limited dynamic range. The circuit that performs such a gain adjustment is the AGC.