Shown here is the block diagram of a traditional super-heterodyne receiver. Regardless of the topology, single-ended or differential, the system goal is to successfully deliver a desired signal to an analog-to-digital converter for digitization. The signal path consists of several RF blocks: the antenna, the filters, a low noise amplifier (LNA), a mixer, an ADC driver amplifier, and the ADC.  The first block after the antenna is the LNA which is tasked with amplifying the signal above the thermal noise. Amplification at this stage is critical as it will determine the sensitivity of the system and will ensure that subsequent mixers and amplifiers after the LNA do not add significantly to the noise floor. Along the way there are band pass filters to suppress any out of band content and reduce distortion or noise that the receiver stages may add along the signal path. The next block, the mixer, follows the LNA to frequency translate the signal of interest, down-converting the high frequency RF signal to a lower, more manageable intermediate frequency (IF). The ADC driver amplifier and the anti-aliasing filter (AAF) prepare the signal to be digitized by the ADC. The driver offers gain and the AAF suppresses anything outside the first Nyquist zone of the ADC, including noise that would be delivered to the ADC input, and out of band spurious components still existing in the signal path. Finally, at the end of the analog signal path, the ADC performs the function of digitizing the baseband information.