Engineering Tutorials

The sensitivity of a receiver is its ability to receive quick signal. This sensitivity may be defined in several ways.

First, it may be started in terms of the signal field strength of a signal that will produce a desired demodulated output level under a certain modulation level. The sensitivity is usually started in terms of the voltage developed by the antenna across the receiver antenna terminals in microvolts. This level ranges from a few microvolts to a few hundred microvolts for typical receiver .

Another way of stating the sensitivity is to state the antenna terminal signal voltage required to produce a specified signal- to- noise ratio. In the case of receiver for digital signals, the sensitivity is usually stated as the input signal level required to produce a desired bit- error rate which is related to signal- to- noise ratio.