THE LOSSLESS TRANSMISSION

LINE
In many practical cases, the loss of the line is very small and can be neglected such that and
thus, the propagation constant becomes:


Since:

In the lossless case the characteristic impedance is a real number,



And the general solutions for voltage and current is:




The wavelength and the phase constant is related by:

Example
An air line has characteristic impedance of 70 and phase constant of 3 rad/m at 100 Mhz.
Calculate the inductance per meter and capacitance per meter of the line.
Multiplying the two equations together:
Edmund Li
TERMINATED LOSSLESS TL
Consider a lossless transmission line terminated in an
arbitrary load impedance

. We assume that an incidence

wave of the form

is generated from a
source with an internal impedance

located at z=-1 from

the load situated at z=0. It is clear that:

Which obviously cannot be satisfied without a reflected wave. Thus, the total voltage and current is the
sum of the incident and reflected waves:

Thus giving at the load:

Rearrangement gives us the ratio of the amplitude of the reflected voltage to the incident voltage the
voltage reflection coefficient at the load.



Where

is the normalised load impedance.

Knowing the voltage reflection coefficient, allows us to express the total voltage and current waves on
the line to be a function of as well:




The superposition of the incident and reflected waves are often referred to as standing waves.
KEY OBSERVATI ONS
1. When there is no reflected wave. This occurs with

, and the load is said to be

matched to the line.
2. When the load is open circuit, and

. When the load is short circuit

,
,

.
3. in general is a complex quantity since

is a complex quantity:

4.

Edmund Li
TIME AVERAGE POWER
The average power along the transmission line at point z is given by:

Which simplifies to:



Which consists of the incident power delivered to the load minus the reflected power

. thus
plays a big role in determining the amount of power delivered to the load:
means maximum power delivered to the load
means no power is delivered

Example
A signal generator having an internal resistance of 1 and an open circuit voltage of

is connected to a 50 lossless transmission line of 4m in length with the velocity of

wave propagation being

. For a matched load, find a) the instantaneous expressions for

voltage and current on the line b) the instantaneous expressions for the voltage and current at the load
assuming that it is located at z=4 c) the average power transmitted to the load.
a) At the input to the transmission line

Thus:
b) Subbing z=4
c) Since it is a matched line:

Edmund Li
REFLECTION LOSS
Since also tells us the power delivered to the load, it can tell us the loss associated to the reflection on
the line known as return loss (RL):

Thus:
Matched load ( ), the reflection loss is infinite since there is no reflected power
Total reflection ( ), the reflection loss is 0 dB and all incidence power is reflected

REFLECTION COEFFICIENT AT INPUT
Since:

The significance of the is that the reflected wave has to travel twice the electrical length .

Edmund Li
STANDING WAVES
When the load is matched, and

and the line is flat. However, mismatches of the load

resulting in reflected waves leads to the formation of standing waves, where the magnitude of the
voltage on the line is not constant.

Thus, the maximum voltage occurs when the complex number is 1 and minimum when the complex
number is -1:



The above proof shows that the maximum and minimum voltage occur when:

The maximum voltage corresponds to constructive interference of the in phase incident
and reflected waves and this occurs when:

While the minimum voltage corresponds to destructive interference of the out of phase
incident and reflected waves when:

This means that:
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO SUCCESSIVE MAXIMUM (OR MINIMA) IS

, WHILE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN A

MAXIMUM AND MINIMUM IS

. THE REPETITION PERIOD OF THE STANDING WAVE IS

The ratio of the maximum and minimum voltage is known as the voltage standing wave ratio
(VSWR/SWR):


The ratio gives an indication of the reflection coefficient or how well the load impedance matches the
line. If S=1, this means that we have a matched line. In reality we want S to be as close to 1 as possible.

Edmund Li
INPUT IMPEDANCE & ADMITTANCE
Since the voltage amplitude is oscillatory with position on the line, the impedance seen looking into the
line must vary with position too. We can simply determine the input impedance looking into the
transmission line at by taking the ratio of the voltage and input:

We can also re-express this in terms of trigonometric ratios:

Note that if we have a matched line,

then

, which is as expected.

By the same techniques, we can find the input admittance:

Edmund Li
SHORT CIRCUIT TERMINATION CASE
In this case,

This means that the voltage and current on the line are:

What we find is that the current is at a maximum at the load (as is
expected for a short circuit), and the voltage is 0.
To find the input impedance then:

FIGURE 1: VOLTAGE, CURRENT AND INPUT
IMPEDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF WAVELENGTH
Edmund Li
OPEN CIRCUIT TRANSMISSION LINE

In an open circuited transmission line:


The resulting voltage and currents on the line are:

The input impedance is thus:

FIGURE 2: VOLTAGE, CURRENT & INPUT AS A FUNCTION OF
WAVELENGTH
Edmund Li
APPLICATIONS OF SHORT CIRCUITED & OPEN CIRCUITED TL
NETWORK ANALYSER
The network analyser is an instrument that can measure the impedance of any load connected to its input
terminals after calibration.
When used to measure the input impedance of a short circuit transmission line

followed by the
measurements of the open circuited transmission line

, the two measurements can be used to

determine the characteristic impedance and phase constant:

MI CROWAVE FI LTERS
Since capacitors and inductors do not behave as they do as lumped circuit elements, lengths of shorted or
open transmission lines can be used to create capacitance and inductance. Recall that if the input
impedance is strictly reactive then we can mould:

Into the impedances of an inductor and capacitor:

Thus if

we can create an equivalent inductor or if

we can create an equivalent capacitor:

We thus find that the transmission line (stub) is capacitive or inductive based on the length. They are
connected in series or shunt sections of transmission lines.
The same can be done for open circuited transmission lines, but due to the fringing fields creating
capacitances at the end of the open end it proves to be difficult to create the required inductances and
capacitances.


Edmund Li
HALF WAVELENGTH LONG LOSSLESS TRANSMISSION LINE
When

we find that:

Thus, a generator connected to a load through a half wavelength lossless
transmission line will produce the same voltage across the load and current
through it, as when the line is not there.

QUARTER WAVELENGTH LONG TRANSMISSION LINE

When

or

for generality, the input impedance will be:

The significance of such a finding is that if we have two transmission
line segments we can find a

with TL2=

such that we have a

matched load between the two segments of the transmission line:

If we have a matched load for TL 1 then

then we eliminate
reflection on TL1 by ensuring

.
Edmund Li