In electrical engineering, the power gain of an electrical network is the ratio of an output power to an input power. Unlike other signal gains, such as voltage and current gain, "power gain" may be ambiguous as the meaning of terms "input power" and "output power" is not always clear. Three important power gains are operating power gain, transducer power gain and available power gain. Note that all these definitions of power gains employ the use of average (as opposed to instantaneous) power quantities and therefore the term "average" is often suppressed, which can be confusing at occasions.
The operating power gain of a two-port network,, is defined as:
GP=
| PL | |
| PI |
where
If the time-averaged input power depends on the load impedance, one must take the maximum of the ratio, not just the maximum of the numerator.
The transducer power gain of a two-port network,, is defined as:
GT=
| PL | |
| PS max |
where
In terms of y-parameters this definition can be used to derive:
GT=
| 4|y21|2\Re{(YL) | |
| \Re{(Y |
S)}}{l|(y11+YS)(y22+YL)-y12y21r|2}
where
This result can be generalized to z, h, g and y-parameters as:
GT=
| 4|k21|2\Re{(ML) | |
| \Re{(M |
S)}}{l|(k11+MS)(k22+ML)-k12k21r|2}
where
may only be obtained from the source when the load impedance connected to it (i.e. the equivalent input impedance of the two-port network) is the complex conjugate of the source impedance, a consequence of the maximum power theorem.
The available power gain of a two-port network,, is defined as:
GA=
| PL max | |
| PS max |
where
Similarly may only be obtained when the load impedance is the complex conjugate of the output impedance of the network.