Weird Behavior in Wires (Skin Effect)

When dealing with simple dc hobby projects, wires and cables are straightforward—
they act as simple conductors with essentially zero resistance. However, when you
replace dc currents with very high-frequency ac currents, weird things begin to take
place within wires. As you will see, these “weird things” will not allow you to treat
wires as perfect conductors.
First, let’s take a look at what is going on in a wire when a dc current is flowing
through it.

A wire that is connected to a dc source will

cause electrons to flow through the wire in a
manner similar to the way water flows through
a pipe. This means that the path of any one
electron essentially can be anywhere within
the volume of the wire (e.g., center, middle
radius, surface).

Now, let’s take a look at what happens when a high-frequency ac current is sent
through a wire.

An ac voltage applied across a wire will cause

electrons to vibrate back and forth. In the
vibrating process, the electrons will generate
magnetic fields. By applying some physical
principles (finding the forces on every electron
that result from summing up the individual
magnetic forces produced by each electron),
you find that electrons are pushed toward the
surface of the wire. As the frequency of the
applied signal increases, the electrons are
pushed further away from the center and
toward the surface. In the process, the center
region of the wire becomes devoid of conducting
electrons.

The movement of electrons toward the surface of a wire under high-frequency

conditions is called the skin effect. At low frequencies, the skin effect does not have a
large effect on the conductivity (or resistance) of the wire. However, as the frequency
increases, the resistance of the wire may become an influential factor. Table 3.2 shows
just how influential skin effect can be as the frequency of the signal increases (the
table uses the ratio of ac resistance to dc resistance as a function of frequency).

One thing that can be done to reduce the resistance caused by skin effects is to use
stranded wire—the combined surface area of all the individual wires within the conductor
is greater than the surface area for a solid-core wire of the same diameter.
Weird Behavior in Cables (Lecture on Transmission Lines)

Like wires, cables also exhibit skin effects. In addition, cables exhibit inductive and
capacitive effects that result from the existence of magnetic and electrical fields
within the cable. A magnetic field produced by the current through one wire will
induce a current in another. Likewise, if two wires within a cable have a net difference
in charge between them, an electrical field will exist, thus giving rise to a capacitive
effect.

Taking note of both inductive and capacitive effects, it is possible to treat a cable
as if it were made from a number of small inductors and capacitors connected
together. An equivalent inductor-capacitor network used to model a cable is shown
in Fig.
To simplify this circuit, we apply a reduction trick; we treat the line as an infinite
ladder and then assume that adding one “run” to the ladder (one inductor-capacitor
section to the system) will not change the overall impedance Z of the cable. What this
means—mathematically speaking—is we can set up an equation such that Z = Z +
(LC section). This equation can then be solved for Z. After that, we find the limit as Δx
goes to zero. The mathematical trick and the simplified circuit are shown below.

By convention, the impedance of a cable is called the characteristic impedance

(symbolized
Z0). Notice that the characteristic impedance Z0 is a real number. This means
that the line behaves like a resistor despite the fact that we assumed the cable had
only inductance and capacitance built in.
The question remains, however, what are L and C? Well, figuring out what L and
C should be depends on the particular geometry of the wires within a cable and on
the type of dielectrics used to insulate the wires. You could find L and C by applying
some physics principles, but instead, let’s cheat and look at the answers. The following
are the expressions for L and C and Z0 for both a coaxial and parallel-wire cable:

Here, k is the dielectric constant of the insulator, μ0 = 1.256 ?10−6 H/m is the
permeability
of free space, and ε0 = 8.85 ?10−12 F/m is the permitivity of free space. Table
3.3 provides some common dielectric materials with their corresponding constants.

Often, cable manufacturers supply capacitance per foot and inductance per foot
values for their cables. In this case, you can simply plug the given manufacturer’s
values into Z = _L_/_C_ to find the characteristic impedance of the cable. Table 3.4
shows capacitance per foot and inductance per foot values for some common cable
types.