Attenuation

Attenuation

Attenuation is a measure of how much a signal weakens as it travels through a medium. This book doesn’t discuss attenuation in formal terms, but it does address the impact of attenuation on performance.

Attenuation is a contributing factor to why cable designs must specify limits in the lengths of cable runs. When signal strength falls below certain limits, the electronic equipment that receives the signal can experience difficulty isolating the original signal from the noise present in all electronic transmissions. The effect is exactly like trying to tune in distant radio signals. Even if you can lock on to the signal on your radio, the sound generally still contains more noise than the sound for a local radio station.