Frequency vs. bandwidth, gain vs. amplification, ERP vs. EIRP, near vs. far field, link budgets, multipath fading, and channel capacity — the paired concepts that get confused most often, and the ones every later module in this program assumes you can tell apart cold.
This is the hallmark module of the program. Every one of the pairs covered here — gain vs. amplification, ERP vs. EIRP, LOS vs. NLOS, SNR vs. SINR — sounds like vocabulary until you've watched an engineer get a real link budget or a real compliance filing wrong by confusing them. This module explains each distinction with the concrete example and the common confusion it resolves, not just a definition.
By the end of this module you should be able to build a complete link budget from transmitter power to received signal margin, explain why a wider channel — not a higher center frequency — is what actually drives throughput, and know exactly which diversity or duplexing technique a later module reaches for and why. Module 4 (Antennas) and Module 10 (RF System Design) both build directly on the gain, EIRP, and link-budget concepts introduced here.