ATTENUATOR CONTROL FOR A SIGNAL PROCESSING CHAIN

摘要

An attenuator control method of a signal processing chain comprising two or more signal processing units is disclosed. One of the two or more signal processing units is a signal attenuator adapted to apply adaptive signal attenuation of an attenuator input signal based on one or more attenuation parameters to provide an attenuator output signal. At least one of the two or more signal processing units has an associated wearout process and a corresponding wearout budget, wherein a wearout event of the wearout process occurs when a level of a wearout indication signal of the signal processing chain is in a wearout region, and wherein the wearout process is modeled by a wearout event cost associated with a corresponding wearout event. The method comprises obtaining an indication of whether a wearout event of the wearout process has occurred. If the obtained indication shows that a wearout event of the wearout process has occurred, the method comprises updating a wearout accumulation metric of the wearout process by the associated wearout event cost, comparing the wearout accumulation metric of the wearout process with one or more wearout thresholds of the wearout process, and adapting the attenuation parameters of the signal attenuator based on the comparison. The method also comprises controlling the signal attenuator based on the attenuation parameters. Corresponding attenuator control arrangement is also disclosed.