A superheterodyne circuit mixes an incoming high-frequency signal with a variable local oscillator to produce a constant, lower intermediate frequency. This allows the bulk of the receiver's amplification and filtering stages to be optimized for a single, fixed frequency rather than tuning across a wide band. It remains the dominant topology for radio, television, and radar receivers due to its superior selectivity and sensitivity.
Heard on the job
We're designing a dual-conversion superheterodyne receiver to knock out the image frequency problems we saw on the first prototype.
Also heard as
- superhet