Patent ID: 6978117

Claim:
A method of preventing saturation of an RF front end in a radio receiver when receiving a desired radio broadcast signal via an antenna in the presence of an undesired radio broadcast signal within a passband of said RF amplifier, said method comprising the steps of: coupling an antenna signal from said antenna to said RF front end, thereby generating an amplified signal; operating said radio receiver to demodulate said desired radio broadcast signal in response to said amplified signal, thereby generating a demodulated signal; determining a signal-to-noise quality parameter of said demodulated signal; and adaptively adjusting an attenuation of said antenna signal prior to said RF front end by an attenuation determined in response to said signal-to-noise quality parameter for substantially maximizing said signal-to-noise quality parameter wherein said step of adaptively adjusting said attenuation comprises the steps of: iteratively adjusting said attenuation and determining said signal-to-noise quality parameter at each adjusted attenuation to determine a plurality of data points; estimating a characteristic of said signal-to-noise quality parameter versus said attenuation in response to said data points; and setting said attenuation to a value within said characteristic substantially maximizing said signal-to-noise quality parameter.