AM receiver and demodulator

1. An amplitude modulation receiver comprising:

an antenna for receiving a signal;

an input filter connected to the antenna;

a variable gain amplifier connected to the input filter and responsive to a gain control signal;

an A/D converter connected to the variable gain amplifier, responsive to a sampling signal and providing a sampled digital signal;

a D/A converter receiving a demodulated signal and providing an analogue output signal; and

a controller receiving the sampled digital signal from the A/D converter, and including software for generating the gain control signal for the variable gain amplifier, generating the sampling signal for the A/D converter, demodulating the sampled digital signal and providing the demodulated signal to the D/A converter.

2. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller provides a digital gain control signal to a first integrator connected to the variable gain amplifier.

3. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller provides a digital sampling signal to a second integrator connected to a phase locked loop whose output provides the sampling signal to the A/D converter.

4. The receiver according to claim 3 , wherein the second integrator is connected to a voltage control oscillator of the phase locked loop.

5. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller provides a first gross sampling signal and a fine sampling signal to a fractional phase locked loop whose output provides the sampling signal to the A/D converter.

6. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller generates a variable sampling signal whose rate is coherent with the carrier frequency of the received signal.

7. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the software includes an input filter for the sampled digital signal and an output filter for the demodulated signal.

8. The receiver according to claim 7 , wherein the demodulator and the input filter are tuned to the carrier frequency of the received signal and the output filter is tuned to a decimated carrier frequency.

9. The receiver according to claim 8 , wherein coefficients of the filters for each carrier frequency are stored in the controller.

10. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller includes software decimation and integration demodulator.

11. The receiver according to claim 10 , wherein the sampled digital signal is multiplied by a demodulation signal at a carrier frequency and integrated over a carrier cycle period.

12. The receiver according to claim 11 , wherein the software filters the sampled digital signal and the integrated demodulated signal to band pass about the carrier frequency.

13. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller includes a software demodulator, wherein:

the sampled digital signal s(t) is segmented by a windowing function g(t−mT c ), where T c is a cycle time period;

the segments of the sampled digital signal s(t) are multiplied by the carrier frequency w k , which produces demodulated segments d(t);

the demodulated segments d(t) are segmented by a windowing function g(t−lT c ),

the segmented demodulated signals d(t) are integrated over the cycle period T c , every period; and

the integrated demodulated segments are summed, which produces the modulation function φ k [nT c ].

14. The receiver according to claim 13 , wherein the software includes an input filter for the sampled digital signal and an output filter for the summed demodulated segments.

15. The receiver according to claim 1 , wherein the controller is a multi-thread processor performing the receiving and demodulating of the sampled digital signal from the A/D converter, generating of the gain control signal for the variable gain amplifier, generating of the sampling signal for the A/D converter, and providing the demodulated signal to the D/A converter in parallel.