Dictionary of Electrical Engineering

Commonly used terms in the Electrical industry.

antenna gain
the maximum ratio of an antenna's ability to focus or receive power in a given direction relative to a standard; the standard is usually an isotropic radiator or a dipole. The gain includes the efficiency of the antenna.
automatic gain control (AGC)
a method to control the power of the received signal in order to be able to use the full dynamic range of the receiver and to prevent receiver saturation.
gain
(1) the ratio of the output variable of a device to its input variable. For calculation purposes, the dimensionality of the gain is simply the unit of the output variable divided by the unit of the input variable. The gain of a device is a dimensionless value only when the electrical units of both the input and output variables are the same (e.g., voltage gain, current gain, power gain, etc.). In this case, a gain greater than one indicates an increase from input to output, while a value for gain less than one is indicative of a decrease (or attenuation). The overall gain of several cascaded components is found by multiplying the individual gains of each component in the system. Gain is often expressed in decibels to facilitate calculation of cascaded gains in a system. decibel

(2) the ratio of the radiation intensity of a particular antenna to that of an isotropic radiator, in the same direction and at the same distance.
maximum transducer power gain
maximum value of transducer power gain a circuit or device exhibits; occurs when the input and output ports of the circuit are terminated with simultaneous conjugate match conditions. The transducer power gain is defined as the ratio of power delivered to a load to the power available from the source.
phase detector gain
the ratio of the DC output voltage of the phase detector to the input phase difference. This is usually expressed in units of volts per radian.
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.
steady-state gain
the gain that a system applies to DC (constant) input signals.
transducer gain
ratio of the power delivered to the load to the power available from the source.