The decibel relationships between amplifier distortion products

Abstract

Assuming that the transfer characteristic of the amplifier can be represented by a power series with three terms, an analysis is carried out to determine the frequency and amplitude of each distortion component. To make it easy to apply these results to a practical situation, the necessary constants are defined to enable expressing these relationships in decibel terms. The results are simple expressions which involve adding or subtracting decibel constants from products of the output levels, in dBmV, by integers. Cross modulation, compression, and differential gain are treated, as well as the various harmonics and beats. The usefulness of these results in practice is discussed, as well as the extent of agreement which can be expected between theory and practice.