If you have spent any time at all in the review of a receiver’s specifications, you have seen this term, “12 dB SINAD. Simply because this term is a defacto standard in the industry, it is worth your while to at least have a vague understanding of what it is telling you. But the good news is, is that whatever it means, it means the same thing across the spectrum and is universally used. It therefore becomes a standard that you can gage the numbers by.
Take courage: if you have convinced yourself that what follows is too hard, then it is okay just to skip what follows and understand that the lower a specification of 12 dB SINAD is for your receiver, the better it is. You don’t need to go beyond that. This specification merely becomes for you, how good is good.
But let’s take this a step further on this webpage. Let’s understand its simple meaning.
12 dB SINAD participates in a receiver’s ability to bring in weak signals. It participates with other specifications to publish how sensitive a receiver is to weak signals.
The term itself (SINAD) is the Signal to Noise and Distortion ratio but is measured in decibels. There are three elements that go into this ratio.
- A test signal–this is an audio signal generated explicitly for this measurement and is typically a 1 kHz sine wave. Because the dB SINAD measure is relative, the amplitude of this test signal is not significant as long as it does not introduce distortion itself. This signal represents a demodulated signal coming leaving the radio IF stage. You might think of it as a perfect imposter.
- Noise–
This page is under construction so please bear with us during its preparation.
