Patent ID: 8498366

Claim:
An apparatus having an input and comprising: a cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus for estimating a frequency and a bandwidth of signals proximate in frequency to a desired signal, cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus comprising: M filter banks with each of said M filter banks comprising N filters such that each of said M filter banks provides N output signals such that the cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus is adapted to monitor N signals of interest in parallel and wherein the output signals of each of said M filter banks are bandpass signals having a center frequency; a mixer coupled to the output of each of said M filter banks such that each mixer receives a corresponding one of each of the N output signals from each of said M filter banks wherein the mixers increase a spectral resolution of the apparatus by a factor of α M and wherein the bandwidth of each of the bandpass signals is successively reduced by the mixers and succeeding filter bank; N digitally controlled oscillators (DCOs) coupled to provide signals to each of said mixers; and a decision network coupled to receive signals from said M filter banks and to provide signals to said DCOs; a tunable filter coupled to an input of a receiver; and a tuner which receives a signal from said cascaded super-heterodyne apparatus and tunes the filter to filter out unwanted signals from the receiver.