Balanced Line - Characteristic Impedance

Characteristic Impedance

The characteristic impedance of a transmission line is an important parameter at higher frequencies of operation. For a parallel 2-wire transmission line,

where is half the distance between the wire centres, is the wire radius and, are respectively the permeability and permittivity of the surrounding medium. A commonly used approximation that is valid when the wire separation is much larger than the wire radius and in the absence of magnetic materials is

Z_0 = \frac{120}{\sqrt{\epsilon_r}}\ln\left(\frac{2l}{R}\right),

where is the relative permittivity of the surrounding medium.

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