DESENSE

Desense for wireless electronics really means something that desensitizes a receiver - and is often in fact internal to the electronics product itself.  One of the most common ways to desense a receiver is for a frequency close to the one of interest swamping the receiver input.  Receivers often have filters on the front of their circuits to help prevent unwanted frequencies from getting to the receiver and hurting its operation.  In the case of desense, however, the signal is often internal or within the allowable frequency band of the transmitter.

Two common examples of desense:

For a wireless product that is capable of transmitting and receiving at the same time, the receiver often has a filter in front of it to ensure that the powerful transmitter output does not get to the receiver.  This filter would be set to block the transmitter frequency while allowing the receive frequency to be input to the receiver.  However, depending on transmitter characteristics and also the limitations on a filter, there still may be transmitter energy getting to the receiver and harming its operation.  Such a problem is often referred to as "transmitter desense"

In another case, a synthesized radio might have desense.  A synthesizer is an electronic circuit that mathematically manufactures the correct frequencies needed by the radio.  However, in manufacturing this frequency, it has the characteristics of filtered noise in which its primary component is the correct frequency, but it will have a noise band around it lower in power.   This noise band can desense the receiver also by adding noise at the same frequency as the receive frequency.