System gain is defined as the difference between which quantities?

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System gain represents the margin the link has to tolerate losses while still meeting the receiver’s requirements. It is defined as the difference between the transmitter’s average power and the receiver’s sensitivity. The transmitter average power shows how much signal energy is launched into the link, and the receiver sensitivity is the minimum input level at which the receiver can operate reliably. Subtracting these two gives the available margin in decibels, i.e., how much total loss the system can withstand. Using peak power wouldn’t reflect the sustained signal level, and adding powers or referring to attenuation doesn’t describe the usable margin the system can tolerate.