Talk:Gain (antenna)

Proposed merger
The proposed destination section of the merger seems to have been taken out of the article, and following discussion the material moved here. I have therefore removed the merge tag. Kcordina 09:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Receive gain
A probably stupid question but I can't seem to find any information about this - does antenna gain have any influence on signals received through the antenna, or just those transmitted? I have read (possibly incorrectly) that antenna gain has an influence on the received signal strength, but this article would imply otherwise. Perhaps someone with expertise in this area could clarify this. 24.244.188.37 05:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The gain is the same for transmitted or received. 216.148.248.75 as of 16:11, 27 July 2007


 * Could you please give a source for that? or explain somehow ? --Wabschke (talk) 02:02, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It is a basic consequence of reciprocity (electromagnetism). 146.6.200.225 (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge Total Radiated Power to Antenna gain

 * Support; though I am no expert, TRP seems to make sense within a discussion of antenna gain. Cnilep (talk) 20:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

✅. Cnilep (talk) 17:59, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge Directive gain and Absolute gain (physics) into this page?
I believe Directive gain, Absolute gain (physics), and this page all refer to the same concept. and need to be merged. I think the other two should be merged into this page because the term "antenna gain" is more specific and distinguishes it more clearly from amplifier gain, and because it is standard usage in electrical engineering. Comments? -- Chetvorno TALK 09:27, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe that they, (the above 3 articles mentioned), should all should be merged into Antenna (radio). It would form a more concise article for the reader. The job of wiki linking these small sections would be detremental for the reader experience.Francis E Williams (talk) 14:37, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

With the latter proposal, I entirely disagree because Antenna (radio) is by no means concise and ought, if anything, to be made smaller by moving bits to other, narrower articles. Merging these various small articles into a somewhat larger one is a much better idea. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Jim.henderson, but regardless of the final destination, as a first step can we all agree on merging Directive gain and Absolute gain (physics) into this article?  -- Chetvorno TALK 21:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Count me in - agree to merge.Francis E Williams (talk) 14:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- Chetvorno TALK 10:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

1.64 what?
It says that the lossless halfwave dipole antennas gain is 1.64. But what is the unit of this 1.64? Is it a factor, and in that case a factor of what? 193.140.194.148 (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That was actually the gain of the dipole as a dimensionless ratio, the ratio of the power received by the dipole to the power received by an isotropic antenna. However gains are almost always expressed in decibels.  The whole introduction was confusing, so I rewrote it a little, hopefully clarifying the point you raised as well as adding the elementary definition of gain.

No definition of efficiency
The article uses the term "efficiency" in multiple places without defining it anywhere. The closest it gets is near the end where it says indirectly that a lossless antenna is one with efficiency 1, but that begs the question of what makes an antenna lossless. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 00:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I couldn't find a logical place to define "efficiency" in the present organization (other than resorting to links where introduced), and ended up rearranging everything until the logic dovetailed (at least to my satisfaction, YMMV). This turned out to put the definition of "efficiency" in the first paragraph of its section, though the fundamental equation Gain = Eff⋅Dir moved from the beginning to near the end. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Update: I restored the fundamental equation at the beginning as it made for a good introduction. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:18, 10 June 2015 (UTC)