Patent ID: 7856073

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a communication interface operable to receive a continuous time radio signal; a mixing module communicatively coupled to the communication interface and operable to down convert the continuous time radio signal to a continuous time analog signal; an analog to digital converter communicatively coupled to the mixing module and operable to convert the continuous time analog signal to a sequence of input digital samples; a digital gain block operable to receive the sequence of input digital samples to gain adjust the sequence of input digital samples based upon a gain setting to produce a sequence of output digital samples; and a gain setting block communicatively coupled to the digital gain block and operable to produce the gain setting, the gain setting block operable to produce the gain setting at any time as one of: a first fixed gain setting; a second fixed gain setting; and a filtered time varying gain setting applied when transitioning between the first fixed gain setting and the second fixed gain setting, wherein: an input of the digital gain block has a first data width; an output of the digital gain block has a second data width; and the gain setting block produces the gain setting so that the sequence of output digital samples substantially fills the second data width and wherein: the first data width corresponds to an output width of an analog to digital that samples the time wise continuous analog communication signal to produce the sequence of input digital samples; and the second data width corresponds to an input width of a digital signal processor communicatively coupled to the output of the digital gain block.