Electrical Engineering › Section N · Decibels, filters, and Bode plots › Topic N.1
Logarithms and decibels
Signal levels in electronics range from microvolts to kilovolts, and gains pile up stage after stage. The decibel, built on the base-10 logarithm, turns those huge ratios into small numbers that simply add.
In this topic
- Why engineers count in logarithms
- Logarithms in two bases
- Rules that make logarithms useful
- Logarithmic scales
- The bel and the decibel
- Voltage and current ratios
- Worked example: an amplifier's gain in dB
- Absolute levels: dBm and its relatives
- Worked example: a cascaded signal chain
- Decibels and hearing
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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