Dictionary of Electrical Engineering

Commonly used terms in the Electrical industry.

bandwidth
(1) the frequency range of a message or information processing system measured in hertz.
(2) width of the spectral region over which an amplifier (or absorber) has substantial gain (or loss); sometimes represented more specifically as, for example, full width at half maximum.
(3) the property of a control system or component describing the limits of sinusoidal input frequencies to which the system/component will respond. It is usually measured at the half-power points, which are the upper and lower frequencies at which the output power is reduced by one half. Bandwidth is one measure of the frequency response of a system, i.e., the manner in which it performs when sine waves are applied to the input.
(4) the lowest frequency at which the ratio of the output power to the input power of an optical fiber transmission system decreases by one half (3 dB) compared to the ratio measured at approximately zero modulation frequency of the input optical power source. Since signal distortion in an optical fiber increases with distance in an optical fiber, the bandwidth is also a function of length and is usually given as the bandwidth-distance product for the optical fiber in megahertz per kilometer.
See bandwidth-distance product
short circuit gain-bandwidth product
a measure of the frequency response capability of an electronic circuit. When applied to bipolar circuits, it is nominally the signal frequency at which the magnitude of the current
gain degrades to one.
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