PENDIX 1 Power Rarios AND DECIBEL In system calculations and measurements involving the use of power ratios, itis custom- ary practice to use a unit called the decibel. The decibel, commonly abbreviated as dB, is ‘one tenth ofa larger unit, the bel.! In practice, however, we find that for most applications the bel is too large a unit, hence, the wide use of dB as the unit for expressing power ratios. ‘The dB is particularly appropriate for sound measurements because the ear responds to sound in an approximately logarithmic fashion. Thus, equal dB increments are perceived by the ear as equal increments in sound. Let P denote the power at some point of interest in a system. Let Py denote the ref- ‘erence power level with respect to which the power P is compared. The number of deci- bls in the power ratio P/P) is defined as 10 logio(P/I4). For example, a power ratio of 2 approximately corresponds to 3 dB, and a power ratio of 10 exactly corresponds to 10 dB. ‘We may also express the signal power P itself in dB if we divide P by one watt or one milliwatt. In the first case, we express the signal power P in dBW as 10 logio(P/1W), where W is the abbreviation for watt. In the second case, we express the signal power P in Bm as 10 logio(P/1mW), where mW is the abbreviation for milliwatt. "The unit bel, is named in honor of Alexander Graham Bell. In addition to inventing the telephone, Bell was che first to use logarithmic power measurements in sound and bearing eesearch, 459