What exactly is a dBm and how would you measure it?
Asked by: Steve Drake
Answer
It is often convenient to express power or voltage
ratios, (or any ratio for that matter),
using a logarithmic scale. For example the
definition of a power ratio in terms of decibels
is:
Power ratio in dB = 10*Log(P2/P1)
for example if the output power of a device is
found to be half of the input power then we could
express this as -3dB (plug in some numbers to see
this).
Now to answer your question concerning dBm. We
use dBm to express absolute values of power
relative to a milliwatt. The definition is
Measure of power in dBm = 10*Log(power in milliwatts / 1 milliwatt)
So if you wanted to express your power in terms of
dBm instead of milliwatts you would use the above
equation.
For example if your power level were 1 milliwatt,
you could also call this power level 0 dBm.
Or if your power level were 100 milliwatts you
could instead say 20 dBm.
Answered by: Bryan Benson, B.S., Physics Grad Student, CSUF
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