I am a bit confused about Impedance Matching for maximum gain and for maximum power transfer.
I knew that the conjugate matching between, for instance, an amplifier's output port and a load Zl, is given by the condition Zout = Zl*. Under this assumption, reflection at the interface between them will be zero.
Does this operation correspond to maximum gain condition, or maximum power condition, or both? Is there a difference between these two conditions?
There’s a difference.
maximum power when matched results and 50% efficiency from a voltage source.
Higher efficiency and gain means less output power but lower input signal when load is say higher impedance than source. At extremes Gain with no load is twice the voltage but no current so no power.
Depending on narrow-band versus broad-band design, your SNR becomes a key design variable because broad-band interfaces that have 50ohm Rsource and 50ohm Rload will cost you 6dB signal level.
Yet you have the magic-incantation of "but boss, I matched it".
