Chapter 1 - Principles of Transmission Flashcards
What are the advantages of solid conductors vs stranded?
- less costly
- less complex termination system
- better transmission performance at higher frequencies
- less resistance
What are the advantages of stranded conductors vs solid?
- more flexible
- longer flex life
- less susceptible to damage during crimp termination process
What are the advantages of composite conductors?
Composite conductors are conductors made of nontraditional materials. Advantages include: - flexible - lightweight - inexpensive and easy to produce - easily embedded into other materials - low coefficient of expansion
What are the disadvantages of composite conductors?
- poor analog transmission characteristics, including high attenuation especially above 4000Hz
- poor digital transmission characteristics
- easily damaged unless encased in a rigid material
- inconsistent quality
What is dielectric constant?
The ratio of capacitance of an insulated conductor compared to the same uninsulated conductor in air. Air is a reference with a constant of 1.
Usually the lower the dielectric constant the better.
What is dielectric strength?
Measures maximum voltage that an insulation can handle without breakdown.
Higher the better.
What is dissipation factor?
The relative power loss in the insulation.
Lower the better
What is insulation resistance (IR)?
The insulation’s ability to resist the flow of current through it.
Typically expressed as megaohm-km or megaohm-1000 ft
longer the cable the smaller the IR
What is the main reason for twisting pairs of conductors?
To minimize crosstalk and noise by decreasing capacitance unbalance and mutual inductance coupling between pairs.
Twisting also improves balance and reduces noise coupling from external sources
What is pair to pair capacitance unbalance?
Measure of the electric field coupling.
What is mutual inductance?
Measure of magnetic field coupling.
What do cable shields do?
- reduce radiated signal from cable
- reduce effects of electrical hazards
- minimize the effect of external EMI on the conductors within the shielded cable
What impacts the effectiveness of a shield?
- type and thickness of shield material
- number and size of openings in shield
- effectiveness of bonding connection to ground
True or False
A conduit is the best possible shield.
True
What is a poor shield effectiveness rating?
Poor is less than 20dB
What is a fair shield effectiveness rating?
Fair means 20 to 40 dB
What is a good shield effectiveness rating?
Good is 40 to 60 dB
What is an excellent shield effectiveness rating?
Excellent means more than 60 dB
True or False
Drain wires can be used in place of a shield
False
Drain wires are used in addition to a shield to provide an easier means for grounding the shield.
What is the signal strength decibel defined as?
Decibel is defined as:
dB = 10log(P1/P2)
It is the power of signal P1 relative to reference power P2.
3dB indicates a power ratio 2x. So +3dB would double the power.
What the three basic components of a transmission system in telephony?
- source of energy (acoustic energy of speech is converted to electrical signal)
- medium to carry the energy (a balanced twisted pair is commonly used)
- receiving device (transducer in the receiver headset acts a small loudspeaker and converts the electrical signal back to sound energy)
True or False
Loading coils can improve speech transmission quality by:
- compensate for the capacitance of a cable pair
- increase the capacitive current loading in the range of audio frequencies
False
Loading coals reduce the capacitive current loading in the range of audio frequencies
Everything else is true
Note: loading coals will block off frequencies above the voice range and adversely affect data transmission due to severe delay problems
What are the steps to convert analog signals to digital?
- Filtering
- Sampling
- Quantizing/companding
True or False
The sampling rate must be at least twice the highest frequency component of the analog signal to faithfully reproduce the analog signal as a digital signal.
True