All the unit conversions RF engineers use daily — frequency, power, field strength, noise temperature, wavelength and data rate. Type any value and all others update instantly.
RF and microwave engineering uses a wide variety of units that are not common in other fields. Power is almost always expressed in dBm rather than watts. Frequencies span from audio kHz to mmWave THz. Field strength combines electric field (V/m) and magnetic field (A/m). Noise is described by noise figure (dB), noise factor (linear), and noise temperature (Kelvin). This converter covers all of these in one place, with live bidirectional conversion — type any value and everything else updates instantly.
The decibel-milliwatt (dBm) is the primary power unit in RF. It is defined as 10·log₁₀(P/1mW). 0 dBm = 1 mW, 10 dBm = 10 mW, 30 dBm = 1 W, 43 dBm ≈ 20 W. Negative dBm values represent sub-milliwatt powers: a typical WiFi receiver sensitivity of −90 dBm is 1 picowatt. dBW (decibel-watt) is used for high-power systems: 0 dBW = 1 W = 30 dBm. For voltage at 50 Ω: Vrms = √(P·R), so 0 dBm at 50 Ω gives Vrms = 223.6 mV.
Frequency and wavelength are reciprocally related by the speed of light: λ = c/f = 299.792 mm·GHz. At 2.4 GHz, λ = 124.9 mm. At 28 GHz (5G mmWave), λ = 10.7 mm. Engineers often work in wavelengths for transmission line design — a quarter-wave transformer at 5 GHz is 14.9 mm in air (shorter in a substrate by 1/√εeff). Angular frequency ω = 2πf is used in circuit equations and Smith chart derivations.
Noise figure (NF) and noise temperature (Te) both describe how much noise a component adds to a signal, referenced to a standard temperature of T₀ = 290 K. The relationship is: Te = T₀(F−1) where F = 10^(NF/10) is the noise factor. A 3 dB NF amplifier has Te = 290 K — it doubles the noise power. A cryogenic LNA at Te = 5 K has NF = 0.075 dB. The thermal noise floor at 290 K is −174 dBm/Hz, which is the fundamental limit for any system at room temperature.