RF Engineering
How to Calculate an RF Link Budget: A Step by Step Guide with a Worked Example
A link budget adds every gain and subtracts every loss between a transmitter and a receiver to predict the received power, then compares it against the receiver sensitivity to see whether the link will work. Here is the formula, an at a glance budget table, a worked example for a 5.8 GHz point to point link, and the engineering considerations, fade margin, propagation and noise, that decide whether the design survives in service.