The characteristic impedance or surge impedance (usually written Z0) of a uniform transmission line is the ratio of the amplitudes of voltage and current of a wave travelling in one direction along the line in the absence of reflections in the other direction. Equivalently, it can be defined as the input impedance of a transmission line when its length is infinite. Characteristic impedance is determined by the geometry and materials of the transmission line and, for a uniform line, is not dependent on its length. The SI unit of characteristic impedance is the ohm.
The characteristic impedance of a lossless transmission line is purely real, with no reactive component (see below). Energy supplied by a source at one end of such a line is transmitted through the line without being dissipated in the line itself. A transmission line of finite length (lossless or lossy) that is terminated at one end with an impedance equal to the characteristic impedance appears to the source like an infinitely long transmission line and produces no reflections.
The characteristic impedance of an infinite transmission line at a given angular frequency is the ratio of the voltage and current of a pure sinusoidal wave of the same frequency travelling along the line. This relation is also the case for finite transmission lines until the wave reaches the end of the line. Generally, a wave is reflected back along the line in the opposite direction. When the reflected wave reaches the source, it is reflected yet again, adding to the transmitted wave and changing the ratio of the voltage and current at the input, causing the voltage-current ratio to no longer equal the characteristic impedance. This new ratio including the reflected energy is called the input impedance of that particular transmission line and load.
The input impedance of an infinite line is equal to the characteristic impedance since the transmitted wave is never reflected back from the end. Equivalently: The characteristic impedance of a line is that impedance which, when terminating an arbitrary length of line at its output, produces an input impedance of equal value. This is so because there is no reflection on a line terminated in its own characteristic impedance.
Applying the transmission line model based on the telegrapher's equations as derived below, [1] [2] the general expression for the characteristic impedance of a transmission line is: where
This expression extends to DC by letting tend to 0.
A surge of energy on a finite transmission line will see an impedance of prior to any reflections returning; hence surge impedance is an alternative name for characteristic impedance. Although an infinite line is assumed, since all quantities are per unit length, the “per length” parts of all the units cancel, and the characteristic impedance is independent of the length of the transmission line.
The voltage and current phasors on the line are related by the characteristic impedance as: where the subscripts (+) and (−) mark the separate constants for the waves traveling forward (+) and backward (−). The rightmost expression has a negative sign because the current in the backward wave has the opposite direction to current in the forward wave.
The differential equations describing the dependence of the voltage and current on time and space are linear, so that a linear combination of solutions is again a solution. This means that we can consider solutions with a time dependence doing so is functionally equivalent of solving for the Fourier coefficients for voltage and current amplitudes, at some fixed angular frequency Doing so causes the time dependence to factor out, leaving an ordinary differential equation for the coefficients, which will be phasors, dependent on position (space) only. Moreover, the parameters can be generalized to be frequency-dependent. [1]
Let and
Take the positive direction for and in the loop to be clockwise.
We find that and or where
These two first-order equations are easily uncoupled by a second differentiation, with the results: and
Notice that both and satisfy the same equation.
Since is independent of and it can be represented by a single constant (The minus sign is included for later convenience.) That is: so
We can write the above equation as which is correct for any transmission line in general. And for typical transmission lines, that are carefully built from wire with low loss resistance and small insulation leakage conductance further, used for high frequencies, the inductive reactance and the capacitive admittance will both be large, so the constant is very close to being a real number:
With this definition of the position- or -dependent part will appear as in the exponential solutions of the equation, similar to the time-dependent part so the solution reads where and are the constants of integration for the forward moving (+) and backward moving (−) waves, as in the prior section. When we recombine the time-dependent part we obtain the full solution:
Since the equation for is the same form, it has a solution of the same form: where and are again constants of integration.
The above equations are the wave solution for and . In order to be compatible, they must still satisfy the original differential equations, one of which is
Substituting the solutions for and into the above equation, we get or
Isolating distinct powers of and combining identical powers, we see that in order for the above equation to hold for all possible values of we must have:
Since hence, for valid solutions require
It can be seen that the constant defined in the above equations has the dimensions of impedance (ratio of voltage to current) and is a function of primary constants of the line and operating frequency. It is called the “characteristic impedance” of the transmission line, and conventionally denoted by [2] which holds generally, for any transmission line. For well-functioning transmission lines, with either and both very small, or with very high, or all of the above, we get hence the characteristic impedance is typically very close to being a real number. Manufacturers make commercial cables to approximate this condition very closely over a wide range of frequencies.
Consider an infinite ladder network consisting of a series impedance and a shunt admittance Let its input impedance be If a new pair of impedance and admittance is added in front of the network, its input impedance remains unchanged since the network is infinite. Thus, it can be reduced to a finite network with one series impedance and two parallel impedances and Its input impedance is given by the expression [3] [4] [5]
which is also known as its iterative impedance. Its solution is:
For a transmission line, it can be seen as a limiting case of an infinite ladder network with infinitesimal impedance and admittance at a constant ratio. [6] [4] [5] Taking the positive root, this equation simplifies to:
Using this insight, many similar derivations exist in several books [6] [4] [5] and are applicable to both lossless and lossy lines. [7]
Here, we follow an approach posted by Tim Healy. [8] The line is modeled by a series of differential segments with differential series elements and shunt elements (as shown in the figure at the beginning of the article). The characteristic impedance is defined as the ratio of the input voltage to the input current of a semi-infinite length of line. We call this impedance That is, the impedance looking into the line on the left is But, of course, if we go down the line one differential length the impedance into the line is still Hence we can say that the impedance looking into the line on the far left is equal to in parallel with and all of which is in series with and Hence:
The added terms cancel, leaving
The first-power terms are the highest remaining order. Dividing out the common factor of and dividing through by the factor we get
In comparison to the factors whose divided out, the last term, which still carries a remaining factor is infinitesimal relative to the other, now finite terms, so we can drop it. That leads to
Reversing the sign ± applied to the square root has the effect of reversing the direction of the flow of current.
The analysis of lossless lines provides an accurate approximation for real transmission lines that simplifies the mathematics considered in modeling transmission lines. A lossless line is defined as a transmission line that has no line resistance and no dielectric loss. This would imply that the conductors act like perfect conductors and the dielectric acts like a perfect dielectric. For a lossless line, R and G are both zero, so the equation for characteristic impedance derived above reduces to:
In particular, does not depend any more upon the frequency. The above expression is wholly real, since the imaginary term j has canceled out, implying that is purely resistive. For a lossless line terminated in , there is no loss of current across the line, and so the voltage remains the same along the line. The lossless line model is a useful approximation for many practical cases, such as low-loss transmission lines and transmission lines with high frequency. For both of these cases, R and G are much smaller than ωL and ωC, respectively, and can thus be ignored.
The solutions to the long line transmission equations include incident and reflected portions of the voltage and current: When the line is terminated with its characteristic impedance, the reflected portions of these equations are reduced to 0 and the solutions to the voltage and current along the transmission line are wholly incident. Without a reflection of the wave, the load that is being supplied by the line effectively blends into the line making it appear to be an infinite line. In a lossless line this implies that the voltage and current remain the same everywhere along the transmission line. Their magnitudes remain constant along the length of the line and are only rotated by a phase angle.
In electric power transmission, the characteristic impedance of a transmission line is expressed in terms of the surge impedance loading (SIL), or natural loading, being the power loading at which reactive power is neither produced nor absorbed: in which is the RMS line-to-line voltage in volts.
Loaded below its SIL, the voltage at the load will be greater than the system voltage. Above it, the load voltage is depressed. The Ferranti effect describes the voltage gain towards the remote end of a very lightly loaded (or open ended) transmission line. Underground cables normally have a very low characteristic impedance, resulting in an SIL that is typically in excess of the thermal limit of the cable.
Standard | Impedance (Ω) | Tolerance |
---|---|---|
Category 5 | 100 | ±5Ω [9] |
USB | 90 | ±15% [10] |
HDMI | 95 | ±15% [11] |
IEEE 1394 | 108 | +3% −2% [12] |
VGA | 75 | ±5% [13] |
DisplayPort | 100 | ±20% [11] |
DVI | 95 | ±15% [11] |
PCIe | 85 | ±15% [11] |
Overhead power line | 400 | Typical [14] |
Underground power line | 40 | Typical [14] |
The characteristic impedance of coaxial cables (coax) is commonly chosen to be 50 Ω for RF and microwave applications. Coax for video applications is usually 75 Ω for its lower loss.
In physics and electrical engineering, a cutoff frequency, corner frequency, or break frequency is a boundary in a system's frequency response at which energy flowing through the system begins to be reduced rather than passing through.
The propagation constant of a sinusoidal electromagnetic wave is a measure of the change undergone by the amplitude and phase of the wave as it propagates in a given direction. The quantity being measured can be the voltage, the current in a circuit, or a field vector such as electric field strength or flux density. The propagation constant itself measures the dimensionless change in magnitude or phase per unit length. In the context of two-port networks and their cascades, propagation constant measures the change undergone by the source quantity as it propagates from one port to the next.
In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmission must be taken into account. This applies especially to radio-frequency engineering because the short wavelengths mean that wave phenomena arise over very short distances. However, the theory of transmission lines was historically developed to explain phenomena on very long telegraph lines, especially submarine telegraph cables.
In electrical engineering, impedance is the opposition to alternating current presented by the combined effect of resistance and reactance in a circuit.
Twin lead cable is a two-conductor flat cable used as a balanced transmission line to carry radio frequency (RF) signals. It is constructed of two, stranded copper wires, or solid copper-clad steel wires. The wires are held a fixed distance apart by a plastic ribbon that is a good insulator at radio frequencies. It is also called ribbon cable. The uniform spacing of the wires is the key to the cable's function as a transmission line: Any abrupt change in spacing would cause some of the signal to reflect back toward the source, rather than passing through. The plastic also covers and insulates the wires. The name twin lead is most often used to refer specifically to 300 Ω (Ohm) ribbon cable, the most common type, but on occasion, twin lead is used to refer to any type of parallel wire line. Parallel wire line is available with several different values of characteristic impedance such as twin lead ribbon cable (300 Ω), window line, and open wire line or ladder line (500~650 Ω).
In physics, the Josephson effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two superconductors are placed in proximity, with some barrier or restriction between them. The effect is named after the British physicist Brian Josephson, who predicted in 1962 the mathematical relationships for the current and voltage across the weak link. It is an example of a macroscopic quantum phenomenon, where the effects of quantum mechanics are observable at ordinary, rather than atomic, scale. The Josephson effect has many practical applications because it exhibits a precise relationship between different physical measures, such as voltage and frequency, facilitating highly accurate measurements.
In radio and telecommunications a dipole antenna or doublet is one of the two simplest and most widely-used types of antenna; the other is the monopole. The dipole is any one of a class of antennas producing a radiation pattern approximating that of an elementary electric dipole with a radiating structure supporting a line current so energized that the current has only one node at each far end. A dipole antenna commonly consists of two identical conductive elements such as metal wires or rods. The driving current from the transmitter is applied, or for receiving antennas the output signal to the receiver is taken, between the two halves of the antenna. Each side of the feedline to the transmitter or receiver is connected to one of the conductors. This contrasts with a monopole antenna, which consists of a single rod or conductor with one side of the feedline connected to it, and the other side connected to some type of ground. A common example of a dipole is the rabbit ears television antenna found on broadcast television sets. All dipoles are electrically equivalent to two monopoles mounted end-to-end and fed with opposite phases, with the ground plane between them made virtual by the opposing monopole.
The Sallen–Key topology is an electronic filter topology used to implement second-order active filters that is particularly valued for its simplicity. It is a degenerate form of a voltage-controlled voltage-source (VCVS) filter topology. It was introduced by R. P. Sallen and E. L. Key of MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1955.
Acoustic impedance and specific acoustic impedance are measures of the opposition that a system presents to the acoustic flow resulting from an acoustic pressure applied to the system. The SI unit of acoustic impedance is the pascal-second per cubic metre, or in the MKS system the rayl per square metre (Rayl/m2), while that of specific acoustic impedance is the pascal-second per metre (Pa·s/m), or in the MKS system the rayl (Rayl). There is a close analogy with electrical impedance, which measures the opposition that a system presents to the electric current resulting from a voltage applied to the system.
An LC circuit, also called a resonant circuit, tank circuit, or tuned circuit, is an electric circuit consisting of an inductor, represented by the letter L, and a capacitor, represented by the letter C, connected together. The circuit can act as an electrical resonator, an electrical analogue of a tuning fork, storing energy oscillating at the circuit's resonant frequency.
A transmission line which meets the Heaviside condition, named for Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925), and certain other conditions can transmit signals without dispersion and without distortion. The importance of the Heaviside condition is that it showed the possibility of dispersionless transmission of telegraph signals.In some cases, the performance of a transmission line can be improved by adding inductive loading to the cable.
Microstrip is a type of electrical transmission line which can be fabricated with any technology where a conductor is separated from a ground plane by a dielectric layer known as "substrate". Microstrip lines are used to convey microwave-frequency signals.
Ripple in electronics is the residual periodic variation of the DC voltage within a power supply which has been derived from an alternating current (AC) source. This ripple is due to incomplete suppression of the alternating waveform after rectification. Ripple voltage originates as the output of a rectifier or from generation and commutation of DC power.
The telegrapher's equations are a set of two coupled, linear equations that predict the voltage and current distributions on a linear electrical transmission line. The equations are important because they allow transmission lines to be analyzed using circuit theory. The equations and their solutions are applicable from 0 Hz to frequencies at which the transmission line structure can support higher order non-TEM modes. The equations can be expressed in both the time domain and the frequency domain. In the time domain the independent variables are distance and time. The resulting time domain equations are partial differential equations of both time and distance. In the frequency domain the independent variables are distance and either frequency, , or complex frequency, . The frequency domain variables can be taken as the Laplace transform or Fourier transform of the time domain variables or they can be taken to be phasors. The resulting frequency domain equations are ordinary differential equations of distance. An advantage of the frequency domain approach is that differential operators in the time domain become algebraic operations in frequency domain.
Image impedance is a concept used in electronic network design and analysis and most especially in filter design. The term image impedance applies to the impedance seen looking into a port of a network. Usually a two-port network is implied but the concept can be extended to networks with more than two ports. The definition of image impedance for a two-port network is the impedance, Zi 1, seen looking into port 1 when port 2 is terminated with the image impedance, Zi 2, for port 2. In general, the image impedances of ports 1 and 2 will not be equal unless the network is symmetrical with respect to the ports.
Constant k filters, also k-type filters, are a type of electronic filter designed using the image method. They are the original and simplest filters produced by this methodology and consist of a ladder network of identical sections of passive components. Historically, they are the first filters that could approach the ideal filter frequency response to within any prescribed limit with the addition of a sufficient number of sections. However, they are rarely considered for a modern design, the principles behind them having been superseded by other methodologies which are more accurate in their prediction of filter response.
The primary line constants are parameters that describe the characteristics of conductive transmission lines, such as pairs of copper wires, in terms of the physical electrical properties of the line. The primary line constants are only relevant to transmission lines and are to be contrasted with the secondary line constants, which can be derived from them, and are more generally applicable. The secondary line constants can be used, for instance, to compare the characteristics of a waveguide to a copper line, whereas the primary constants have no meaning for a waveguide.
Characteristic admittance is the mathematical inverse of the characteristic impedance. The general expression for the characteristic admittance of a transmission line is:
An RLC circuit is an electrical circuit consisting of a resistor (R), an inductor (L), and a capacitor (C), connected in series or in parallel. The name of the circuit is derived from the letters that are used to denote the constituent components of this circuit, where the sequence of the components may vary from RLC.
Performance modelling is the abstraction of a real system into a simplified representation to enable the prediction of performance. The creation of a model can provide insight into how a proposed or actual system will or does work. This can, however, point towards different things to people belonging to different fields of work.
If we imagine the line as broken up into small lengths Δℓ, each length will look like one section of the L-C ladder with a series inductance ΔL and a shunt capacitance ΔC. We can then use our results for the ladder filter. If we take the limit as Δℓ goes to zero, we have a good description of the transmission line. Notice that as Δℓ is made smaller and smaller, both ΔL and ΔC decrease, but in the same proportion, so that the ratio ΔL/ΔC remains constant. So if we take the limit of Eq. (22.28) as ΔL and ΔC go to zero, we find that the characteristic impedance z0 is a pure resistance whose magnitude is √(ΔL/ΔC). We can also write the ratio ΔL/ΔC as L0/C0, where L0 and C0 are the inductance and capacitance of a unit length of the line; then we have.
This article incorporates public domain material from Federal Standard 1037C. General Services Administration. Archived from the original on 2022-01-22.