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Compression point

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1 dB compression point (P1dB) on a graph of the transfer function (in German). An ideal amplifier will produce a straight line (German: ideale Kennlinie). A real-world amplifier has an output power limit and will therefore exhibit gain compression (German: reale Kennlinie)

The compression point is a metric describing an aspect of electronic amplifiers. For example, the 1-dB compression point (sometimes notated as P1dB[1][2]) is the output power of the amplifier (for the signal of interest) at which it differs from an ideal linear amplifier by more than 1 dB. So a larger 1-dB compression point means that the amplifier can produce larger outputs (for the same amount of distortion).[3] It will often be quoted by manufacturers of amplifiers[4]..[5]

The compression point is sometimes used (interchangeably with the third-order intercept point) to define the upper limit of the dynamic range of an amplifier. A rule of thumb that holds for many linear radio-frequency amplifiers is that the 1 dB compression point point falls approximately 10 dB below the third-order intercept point.[citation needed]

References

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  1. ^ Frenzel, Lou (October 24, 2013). "What's The Difference Between The Third-Order Intercept And The 1-dB Compression Points?". Electronic Design.
  2. ^ "1dB Compression Point (P1dB Point)". May 16, 2015.
  3. ^ Rouphael, Tony J. (2009). "Transceiver System Analysis and Design Parameters". Signal Processing for Software-Defined Radio. pp. 161–198. doi:10.1016/B978-0-7506-8210-7.00006-0. ISBN 978-0-75-068210-7.
  4. ^ "Product Documentation - NI". www.ni.com.
  5. ^ Rouphael, Tony J. (2014). "System Nonlinearity". Wireless Receiver Architectures and Design. pp. 179–261. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-378640-1.00004-4. ISBN 978-0-12-378640-1.