An improved radio frequency receiver and method enabling the dynamic range of a radio frequency receiver to be extended are disclosed. In the receiver system, the effective received channel power is a combination of the wanted signal level, the noise floor and any in band spurious signals generated from blocking signals present at the input to the receiver system. When this total effective channel power is known, the front end gain is optimized by adaptively minimizing the total effective channel power. Since the wanted input signal power does not vary with the receiver gain setting, this optimizes the noise figure and input intercept point for the presented input signal conditions.