What would this receiver be called?

Question

I'm looking at a phase measuring system that uses an amplitude limited version of the received RF signal as a local oscillator to down convert the signal. I've been trying to find a name for this method, along the lines of hetrodyne, homodyne, and autodyne, but none of these seem to fit this configuration.

The input RF is received from multiple elements of a phased array, and one of these elements drives a limiter. (It's assumed that the signal to noise ratio is high enough for this to work.) The limiter output is offset by some fixed frequency and the result is used as a local oscillator to down convert the outputs of each of the antenna elements to the frequency of the offset.

Is there a name for this type of receiver?

Answer 1

It's a bit of question of perspective:

• From a point of outcome, and the existence of an intermediate frequency oscillator (limited signal·fixed frequency oscillation), it's an heterodyne receiver
• The fact that you're using a nonlinearly distorted reception itself to mix down, and then preserve the IF through filtering it's kind of an envelope detector (but that is a very high-level comparison)
• From my point of implementation view, your single branch that you use for mixing is used to find the exact RF frequency, so that your receiver can work with a local oscillator that doesn't "know" the transmit frequency. From that point of view, it's a heterodyne receiver with carrier-recovery frequency correction.