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If you have a transmitter that is perfectly on your frequency but you have an antenna with some impedance what types of losses, and of what magnitude, will you expect from a tuner in between your transmitter and antenna?

For example lets say your system as a whole with no tuner has an SWR of 3 and your system with a tuner is now 1:1. Are there power losses from an LC network used to match impedances?

What are these losses called? Is it easy to calculate wasted power? Is it frequency dependant? Is there a way to approximate delivered power from a given capacitance and inductance on a line with a specific SWR?

Kevin Reid AG6YO
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2 Answers2

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Like a lot of RF engineering, the answer depends on a lot of factors.

The loss by the matching network is usually called "insertion loss." However, with most antenna tuners, the loss varies greatly depending on the antenna impedance. SWR of 3 is not very bad, but it can be 17 ohm real, or 150 ohm real, or it can take uncountably many values of complex numbers.

The discussion below assumes all tuners are built with the best commonly available components (either available now or in the past half century even though they may not be obtainable today).

The lowest loss network is L-match. The problem with L-match is that it requires a huge range of capacitors and inductors, so it is only practical with relay-driven ATUs. The insertion loss is probably in the range of 0.15 to 0.25dB or something of that order for all cases of SWR 3.

The worst is probably Z-match, especially on high bands and high impedance load. Z-match can lose more than 3dB, and the best case loses 1dB or so. It is difficult to improve the insertion loss of a Z-match with any resonable effort to improve the component and build quality, so this topology is limited to QRP uses (or the heat from the loss will be destructive).

T-match is decent for the high-impedance side but gets poor for low-impedance loads and also on low bands. The insertion loss of T-match greatly depends on the quality of the inductors and the range of the variable capacitors used. Larger Cmax is better, especially for the output/load-side capacitor.

Much lesser known, but pi-C match is a bit worse than L-match ATUs but it is a very usable manual tuner topology, and the loss is relatively constant regardless of the load impedance. The insertion loss is typically on the order of 0.3 to 0.5 dB, depending on the design spec (maximum SWR to match) and component/build quality.

Ryuji AB1WX
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An ideal LC network causes no losses whatsoever, because ideal inductors and capacitors do not dissipate power — they have no resistance. The actual loss in your matching network is determined by the actual resistances of the components. It is frequency-dependent because the overall behavior of the network is, and it is also power-dependent due to saturation of inductors' magnetic cores (unless your inductors are air-core).

The other major source of loss in this type of configuration is the loss due to standing waves in the feed line between the antenna and tuner (just as if you were not using a tuner). This is why tuners are best placed near the antenna rather than the transmitter.

Kevin Reid AG6YO
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