Gain, Attenuation, and

Decibels
ENGR. JOMAR A. DADOR
ECE 405 - INSTRUCTOR
 Gain
Gain means amplification. If a signal is applied to a circuit such as the amplifier shown

Ex.
The power output of an amplifier is 6 watts (W). The
power gain is 80. What is the input power?

Ex.
What is the voltage gain of an amplifier
that produces an output of 750 mV for
a 30-μV input? Ex.
Three cascaded amplifiers have power gains of 5, 2, and
17. The input power is 40 mW. What is the output power?
Attenuation

Attenuation refers to a loss introduced by a circuit or component. Many electronic circuits, sometimes called
stages, reduce the amplitude of a signal rather than increase it. If the output signal is lower in amplitude than
the input, the circuit has loss, or attenuation.

Ex.
A voltage divider such as that shown in Figure has values of
R1 = 10 kΩ and R2 = 470 Ω.
a. What is the attenuation?
b. What amplifier gain would you need to offset the loss for
an overall gain of 1?

Example
Decibels
The gain or loss of a circuit is usually expressed in decibels (dB), a unit of measurement that was originally
created as a way of expressing the hearing response of the human ear to various sound levels. A decibel is one-
tenth of a bel. When gain and attenuation are both converted to decibels, the overall gain or attenuation of an
electronic circuit can be computed by simply adding the individual gains or attenuations, expressed in decibels.

Decibel Calculations. The formulas for computing the decibel gain or loss of a circuit are
Examples

a. An amplifier has an input of 3 mV and an output of 5 V. What is the gain in decibels?

b. A filter has a power input of 50 mW and an output of 2 mW. What is the gain or
attenuation?
c. A power amplii er with a 40-dB gain has an output power of 100 W. What is the input
power?
d. An amplii er has a gain of 60 dB. If the input voltage is 50 μV, what is the output
voltage?
e. A circuit consists of two amplii ers with gains of 6.8 and 14.3 dB and two i lters with
attenuations of 216.4 and 22.9 dB. If the output voltage is 800 mV, what is the input
voltage?
f. Express Pout 5 12.3 dBm in watts.
Tuned Circuits
circuits made up of inductors and capacitors that resonate at specific frequencies.
A tuned circuit is made up of inductance and capacitance and resonates at a specific
frequency, the resonant frequency. In general, the terms tuned circuit and resonant circuit
are used interchangeably. Because tuned circuits are frequency-selective, they respond
best at their resonant frequency and at a narrow range of frequencies around the resonant
frequency.

Capacitance is generally added to a circuit by a quality factor Q, the ratio of

capacitor of a specific value, but capacitance can inductive power to resistive
occur between any two conductors separated by an power. This is the ratio of the
insulator. For example, there is capacitance between power returned to the circuit to
the parallel wires in a cable, between a wire and a the power actually dissipated by
metal chassis, and between parallel adjacent copper the coil resistance.
patterns on a printed-circuit board. These are known
as stray, or distributed, capacitances.
Series Resonant Circuits.

Examples
1. What value of inductance will resonate with a 12-pF capacitor at 49 MHz?
2. What is the resonant frequency of a 2.7-pF capacitor and a 33-nH inductor?
 The bandwidth of a resonant circuit dei nes its selectivity, i.e.,
how the circuit responds to varying frequencies. If the
response is to produce a high current only over a narrow
The upper and lower boundaries of the range of frequencies, a narrow bandwidth, the circuit is said to
bandwidth are defi ned by two cutoff be highly selective. If the current is high over a broader range
frequencies designated f1 and f2. These cutoff of frequencies, i.e., the bandwidth is wider, the circuit is less
frequencies occur where the current amplitude selective. In general, circuits with high selectivity and narrow
is 70.7 percent of the peak current. In the figure, bandwidths are more desirable.
the peak circuit current is 2 mA, and the current
at both the lower ( f1) and upper ( f2) cutoff
frequency is 0.707 of 2 mA, or 1.414 mA.
Current levels at which the response is down
70.7 percent are called the half-power points
because the power at the cutoff frequencies is
one-half the power peak of the curve.
Examples

1. The upper and lower cutoff frequencies of a resonant circuit are found to be 8.07 and
7.93 MHz. Calculate (a) the bandwidth, (b) the approximate resonant frequency, and (c)
Q.
2. What are the approximate 3-dB down frequencies of a resonant circuit with a Q of
200 at 16 MHz?

Ex.
A series resonant circuit has a Q of 150 at 3.5 MHz. The applied voltage is 3 μV. What is the
voltage across the capacitor?
Parallel Resonant Circuits. A parallel resonant circuit is formed when the inductor and capacitor
are connected in parallel with the applied voltage.

EX.
What is the impedance of a parallel LC circuit with a resonant frequency of 52 MHz and a Q of 12? L = 0.15 μH.
Ex. Calculate the approximate value of the impedance of the circuit in the previous ex.