Editing SimTX API v24/Receiver session (section)

== Decoding samples ==
Servers currently always send 16-bit samples (<code>sampleFormat = 1</code>). Each block has a per-block floating-point scale followed by interleaved I and Q integers:

<code>x = q × blockScale / 32767</code>

(or <code>/ 127</code> for the 8-bit format, which a client should support in case a server uses it). The server chooses <code>blockScale</code> as the peak magnitude of the block, so the integers always use the full range and small signals keep their precision.

A sample with magnitude 1.0 corresponds to '''−12 dBm''' at the receiver input. The server clips each component to ±1.0 before quantising, so a receiver next to a strong transmitter can overload exactly like a real one. To convert a block's mean power to dBm:

<code>P(dBm) = −12 + 10 × log10( mean(I² + Q²) )</code>

=== What the samples contain ===
The IQ stream is the signal at the output of the receiving antenna, after the antenna's pattern, the feed line loss and the requested noise figure. It includes everything a real receiver would hear: every transmitter in range with its propagation path, fading and Doppler, plus atmospheric, galactic and man-made noise. It does not include receiver hardware imperfections such as tuner roll-off, local-oscillator phase noise or image responses. Software that wants to imitate a particular radio adds those itself.