RF Power Engineering Glossary
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G |
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I |
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O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
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A
ACPR
Adjacent channel power ratio
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B
Base Station
Ground-based transmit and receive system (as in a cellular telephone cell site)
BER
Bit error rate
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C
CDMA
Code division multiple access
CW
Continuous wave; refers to an unmodulated sine-wave signal
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D
dBm
Power level relative to 1mV rms
Device
Discrete packaged transistor
Die
Active semiconductor chip inside a packaged device
(e.g., Silicon, Gallium Arsenide, etc.)
DPSK
Differential phase-shift keying
DQPSK
Differential quadrature phase-shift keying
DUT
Device under test
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E
ECM
Electronic counter-measure
EM
Electromagnetic
EW
Electronic warfare
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F
FET
Field-effect transistor
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G
Gain
Ratio of output power divided by input power
(usually expressed in decibels or dB)
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H
Harmonic
Integer multiples of the fundamental frequency of interest commonly produced by a non-linear amplifier
Harmonic Tuning
Impedance-matching at the harmonic frequencies for
enhanced performance (i.e., efficiency)
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I
Impedance
Specifies the ratio of voltage to current (defined as a
complex number R+jX in units of Ohms)
IP3
Third order input intercept point
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J
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K
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L
LDMOS
Laterally-diffused metal oxide semiconductor
Linearity
Describes how closely an output signal is to a perfectly scaled multiple of a corresponding input signal
Load Pull
Automated measurement of RF performance of a device under test (at a constant frequency) by varying the source and load
impedance presented to the device
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M
Microwave
The range in the electromagnetic spectrum from 300 MHz to
30 GHz (with corresponding wavelengths from 100 cm to
1 cm)
MOSFET
Metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor
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N
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O
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P
Package
Leaded assembly (inside of which one or more die is mounted and connected) for use in larger circuits
Power Amplifier
A class of amplifiers that have the primary purpose of
delivering high output power (usually accompanied by
significant
dissipated power)
Pulsed Radar
A transmit and receive system used for ranging and detection that transmits a train of short bursts of high microwave
signals and receives return signals reflected from a target
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Q
Q
Quality factor; a measure of stored energy/dissipated energy. Also a measure of bandwidth
QAM
Quadrature amplitude modulation
QPSK
Quadrature phase-shift keying
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R
RF
The range in the electromagnetic spectrum loosley defined
from 30 MHz to 3 GHz (with corresponding wavelengths from
1000 cm to 10 cm)
RF Power
A class of engineering -- circuits and signals primarily
concerned with power levels ranging from a few watts to
tens of
thousands of watts in the RF spectrum.
RF Power Transistor
A discrete packaged transistor used in the amplification of
RF power
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S
SNR
Signal-noise ratio
SS-CDMA
Spread spectrum code division multiple access
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T
TDM
Time division multiplexing
TDMA
Time division multiple access
Thermal Impedance
Relates the temperature rise for a given dissipated power (which employs an analogy to the voltage-current
relationship of impedance)
TOI
Third order intercept point
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U
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V
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W
W-CDMA
Wideband code division multiple access. Typically defined
with 5 MHz channels and 3.84 MHz carrier signals
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