Patent ID: 8005452

Claim:
A digital comb limiter combiner comprising: an antenna, wherein the antenna receives an analog signal; an input coupler connected to the antenna, wherein the input coupler receives the analog signal from the antenna; a plurality of sub-band signal processing paths connected to the input coupler, wherein each sub-band signal processing path receives the analog signal and wherein each sub-band processing path comprises: an input bandpass filter connected to the input coupler, wherein the input bandpass filter selects a sub-band of the analog signal; an analog to digital converter (A/D) connected to the input bandpass filter, wherein the A/D comprises instructions to convert the analog sub-band signal to a digital sub-band signal; a digital signal processor (DSP) connected to the A/D, wherein the DSP comprises: an excision threshold; instructions to convert the digital sub-band signal from a time domain to a frequency domain; instructions to excise signal components of the digital sub-band signal at frequencies at which a digital sub-band signal amplitude exceeds the excision threshold thereby producing a processed digital sub-band signal; and instructions to convert the processed digital sub-band signal from the frequency domain to the time domain; a digital to analog converter (D/A) connected to the DSP, wherein the D/A comprises instructions to convert the processed digital sub-band signal to a processed analog sub-band signal; an amplifier connected to the D/A; and an output bandpass filter connected to the amplifier to filter intermodulation products from the processed analog sub-band signal; and an output coupler connected to the output bandpass filter of each of the plurality of sub-band signal processing paths so as to receive the processed analog sub-band signal from each of the plurality of sub-band signal processing paths and to combine the processed analog sub-band signal from each of the plurality of sub-band signal processing paths into a composite signal.