A
link budget is accounting of all of the gains and losses from the transmitter, through the medium (free space, cable, waveguide, fiber, etc.) to the receiver in a
telecommunication system. It accounts for the attenuation of the transmitted signal due to propagation, as well as the
antenna gains,
feedline and miscellaneous losses. Randomly varying channel gains such as
fading are taken into account by adding some margin depending on the anticipated severity of its effects. The amount of margin required can be reduced by the use of mitigating techniques such as
antenna diversity or
frequency hopping.