| AB | air bridge | -- |
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| ABCS | antimonide-based compound semiconductor | An extremely low voltage technology for very low power LNAs. |
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| AC | alternating current | What SoCal Edison supplies between roaming blackouts. |
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| ACC | adaptive cruise control | The "car radar" we were all promised ten years ago would be on all new cars. |
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| ACI | adjacent channel interference | -- |
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| ACLR | adjacent channel leakage ratio | -- |
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| ACPR | adjacent channel power ratio | A measurement of power amplifier linearity. |
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| ACWG | asymmetrical coplanar waveguide | -- |
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| ADC | analog to digital converter | -- |
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| ADS | Advanced Design System | Agilient's microwave design tool. |
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| ADT | automatic detection and tracking | A radar term. |
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| AESA | active electronically-steered array | The holy grail of antennas, but not even the federal government can afford one, so where does that leave the rest of us? |
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| AGC | automatic gain control | Circuitry that actively adjusts the gain of an amplifier to maintain a constant gain output power over temperature, frequency, or input power conditions. |
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| ALD | atomic layer deposition | A method of precisely depositing material. |
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| ALN | Aluminum nitride | A ceramic substrate that has good heat-sinking properties. |
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| AM | amplitude modulation | The simplest way to put a baseband signal onto a carrier signal. |
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| AM/PM | amplitude modulation to phase modulation | A form of distortion. |
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| AMPS | Advanced mobile phone system | Analog cell phone standard. |
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| ANA | automated network analyzer | Used to measure S-parameters of a network. |
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| AOA | angle of arrival | A term associated with antennas. |
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| APC-7 | Amphenol precision connector, 7 millimeter | Trademarked name for a sexless connector system. |
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| APDP | anti-parallel diode pair | Often used in a sub-harmonic mixer. |
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| APS | antenna positioning system | -- |
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| ARRL | American Radio Relay League | The organization that supports ham radio. |
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| ASIC | application-specific semiconductor | The most expensive (and elegant) means of providing logic for your modules. |
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| ASK | amplitude-shift keying | -- |
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| ATE | automated test equipment | What you will need when your circuit enters production |
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| ATR | anti transmit-receive cells | -- |
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| AUT | antenna under test | -- |
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| AWG | American wire gauge | A standard for copper wire diameter. |
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| AWGN | additive white Gaussian noise | -- |
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