"But that's with a pure-tone stimulus. Perhaps a prescaler could be
made to act as a kind of preamp-plus-mixer by pumping it with an LO
just at threshold, then adding in the input signal. Likely enough,
though, there are better ways to accomplish whatever the
system-level goal is.

Cheers,
Peter"

It would probably behave as some kind of funky mixer when you feed it Fc (single carrier) and LO. But once you expose it to the "real world" of multiple carriers, the output would be a mishmash. I also doubt the noise figure would be useful for any useful pre-amplification. "But that's with a pure-tone stimulus. Perhaps a prescaler could be made to act as a kind of preamp-plus-mixer by pumping it with an LO just at threshold, then adding in the input signal. Likely enough, though, there are better ways to accomplish whatever the system-level goal is. Cheers, Peter" -- Joe Leikhim Leikhim and Associates Communications Consultants Oviedo, Florida www.Leikhim.com JLeikhim@Leikhim.com 407-982-0446 WWW.LEIKHIM.COM