"What are decibels?" article has been uploaded to the RF Design Guide page

In any radio communication system, a transmitter sending out several watts of power can end up being a tiny fraction (e.g. a millionth) of watt by the time it arrives at the receiver. For spanning such large range of values, we need to consider proportional changes - instead of adding and subtracting.

So how does decibels enter?

Decibels express these changes as ratios and what's more in simple numbers that are easier to work with. Instead of fractions and decimals, we have simple numbers that can be added and subtracted (instead of multiply and divide). To the non-engineer, it may look unnecessary, but as we will see in this article, the use of simple numbers make RF systems easier to analyse.

• What are decibels?