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Glossary Terms and Definitions Beginning with the Letter G

0-9

G	Gram(s)
GaAs	Gallium arsenide: A semiconductor material used for optoelectronic products such as LEDs, and for high-speed electronic devices.
GaAs MESFET	A Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) Metal-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor (MESFET) is a transistor built with gallium arsenide semiconductor material. The conducting channel is built using a metal-semiconductor (Schottky) junction.
GaAsFET	Gallium arsenide field-effect transistor
GaAsP	Gallium Arsenide Phosphide (or, Gallium Arsenic Phosphide): A semiconductor material used for optoelectronics, including LEDs and photodiodes.
Gain	The amount of amplification accomplished by an amplifier circuit. For instance, a gain of 2 would mean the output is scaled to twice the amplitude of the input.
Gain Error	The gain error of a data converter indicates how well the slope of an actual transfer function matches the slope of the ideal transfer function. Gain error is usually expressed in LSB or as a percent of full-scale range. Gain error can be calibrated out with hardware or in software. Gain error is the full-scale error minus the offset error. See: Application Note 641: ADC and DAC Glossary
Gallium Arsenide	See GaAs
Gallium Arsenide Metal-Semiconductor-Field-Effect-Transistor	See GaAs MESFET
Gallium Arsenide Phosphide	See GaAsP
Galvanic Isolation	Refers to a design technique that separates signal current from AC power distribution introduced stray noise current.
gamma	See Gamma Correction
gamma compensation	See Gamma Correction
Gamma Correction	The application of a function that transforms brightness or luminance values. Gamma functions are usually nonlinear but monotonic and designed to affect the highlights (whitest values), midtones (grayscale), and shadows (dark areas) separately. Most commonly applied to make a light-emitting device, such as a display, match the human eye's brightness curve. In other terms: A gamma correction function can be used to alter the luminance (light intensity) of a display such that its brightness (the human-perceived values) looks correct.
Gate	1. The controlling terminal of a FET. A voltage on the gate controls the current flow between the source and drain. 2. A basic logic element (e.g. AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, etc.).
Gaussian frequency-shift keying	See GFSK
Gaussian minimum shift keying	See GMSK
GbE	Gigabit Ethernet
GBIC	Gigabit Interface Converter: A removable transceiver module permitting Fibre-Channel and Gigabit-Ethernet physical-layer transport.
GBW	Gain bandwidth
General Packet Radio Service	See GPRS
General Purpose I/O	See GPIO
General Purpose Interface Bus	See GPIB
GFSK	Gaussian frequency-shift keying: A type of FSK modulation which uses a Gaussian filter to shape the pulses before they are modulated. This reduces the spectral bandwidth and out-of-band spectrum, to meet adjacent-channel power rejection requirements. Bluetooth uses GFSK.
GHz	Gigahertz
Gigabit	1 billion bits-per-second.
Gigabit Interface Converter	See GBIC
Glitch	General term used to describe an undesirable, momentary pulse or unexpected input or output.
Glitch Immunity	A term used in microprocessor supervisory circuit datasheets to describe the maximum magnitude and duration of a negative-going V_CC supply-voltage pulse without causing the reset output to assert.
Global Navigation Satellite System	See GLONASS
Global Positioning System	See GPS
Global System For Mobile Communications	See GSM
GLONASS	The Russian Global Navigation Satellite System
GMSK	Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) is a form of frequency shift keying (FSK) used in GSM systems. The tone frequencies are separated by exactly half the bit rate. It has high spectral efficiency.
GPIB	General Purpose Interface Bus: A standard bus for controlling electronic instruments with a computer. Also called IEEE-488 bus because it is defined by ANSI/IEEE Standards 488-1978, and 488.2-1987. Also called HP-IB, a trademarked term of Hewlett-Packard, which invented the protocol.
GPIO	General Purpose I/O: A flexible parallel interface that allows a variety of custom connections.
GPON	Gigabit passive optical network
GPRS	General Packet Radio Service: A radio technology for GSM networks that adds packet-switching protocols and shorter set-up time for ISP connections; it offers the possibility to charge by amount of data sent rather than connect time.
GPS	Global Positioning System: A satellite- based navigation system in which two or more signals, received from satellites, are used to determine the receiver's position on the globe.
GSM	Global System for Mobile Communications: A land, mobile, pan-European, digital, cellular radio-communications system.
GSM900	GSM network operating in the 900MHz band, as used by BT Cellnet and Vodafone in the UK, and by more than one hundred countries around the world.
GT	See Transfer
GT/s	See Transfer
GUI	Graphical user interface