A cochlear heterodyning architecture for an RF fovea

Abstract

We describe a novel wireless receiver architecture that is a broadband generalization of narrowband heterodyning systems commonly used in radio. It can be constructed with cochlea-like traveling-wave structures. We show how this architecture exploits the efficiency of cochlear spectrum analysis to perform parallel, multi-scale analysis of wideband signals. We discuss analogies between spectrum analysis in our architecture and the process of successive-subranging analog-to-digital conversion. When combined with our prior work on an RF cochlea, such architectures may be useful in cognitive radios for creating “RF foveas” that select the narrowband components present within wideband, but spectrally sparse signals.