From time to time youll come across the termimpedance matching in various areas of electronics, andespecially in fields like RF and audio engineering.However even in these fields its often misused, probablybecause many people dont really understand theconcepts behind it.In this primer well try to clarify what impedancematching is really all about, why its important in somesituations and
not
important in others.Textbooks usually explain the idea of impedancematching with a very simple example of an electricalgenerator feeding a resistive load, as shown in Fig.1.Because the generator has an internal resistance of itsown (R
G
) as all real generators do this tends todissipate some of the generators output power as heat,whenever we connect a load to its output terminals. Sothe full mechanical power fed into the generator cantbe drawn from it as electrical power, because some willalways be wasted in R
G
.When early electrical engineers were faced with thisproblem, they naturally enough did everything theycould to reduce the internal resistance of theirgenerators. However they were inevitably still left withSOME internal resistance, because its impossible toreduce the resistance to zero unless you run thegenerator at a temperature of close to absolute zero(0Kelvins, or -273
°
C).Once they had minimised the internal resistance, theirnext step was to see if there was some way that theycould minimise the amount of power wasted in it, byvarying the resistance of the load. And what theydiscovered is shown in the Fig.2, which plots the amountof power transferred into the load R
L
as its resistance isvaried. As you can see, the amount of power reaches apeak or MAXIMUM when the load resistance is thesame as or matches the generator resistance. It fallsaway for values both higher and lower than this figure,showing that matching the two is clearly desirable if wewant to maximise the power able to reach the load.So this is where the idea of matching the resistance of the load to that of the generator came from. Beforelong, it was extended to cover the general situation of any load impedance connected to a source of electricalenergy or voltage (EMF), with its own internal sourceimpedance. And the idea of matching the load andgenerator resistance became one of matching the sourceand load impedance
impedance matching
.Now this may sound simple and straightforward, butits important to remember where the idea came from,and also realise what exactly is going on when we domatch load and generator/source resistances orimpedances. True, the POWER transferred to the loadwill be a maximum; but at the same time, the
actual
power being dissipated in the generators internalresistance is EXACTLY THE SAME as that reaching theload! In other words, HALF the total power from thegenerator is now being turned into heat inside R
G
,because its resistance is now half the total connectedacross the generator. The other half is the loadresistance R
L
.For exactly the same reason, R
G
and R
L
will now beacting as a 2:1 voltage divider across the generator so that only HALF the generators output voltage (E
G
)will be appearing across the load. In terms of voltagetransfer, then, matching the impedances isnt particularlyefficient: it actually gives a 6dB loss.Does this mean that impedance matching really onlyapplies to generators in power stations? No, and in factit doesnt really apply there either or at least, notsimply. All it really means is that as you draw more andmore power from a generator by reducing the loadresistance, a point is reached where half thegenerators output power is being wasted inside it.Obviously with very high power generators its not agood idea to load them even this heavily let alonedropping the R
L
even further, where even more poweris lost inside the generator than reaches the load. (Seethe blue curve in Fig.2, showing the power lost in thegenerator.) Most power station generators are loadedwith an R
L
somewhat higher than R
G
, to waste as littlepower as possible.So when IS impedance matching a good idea? Gladyou asked. Basically its for situations rather differentfrom that in Fig.1, where were stuck with a particularload or cable impedance, and we still want to eithermaximise the power transferred into the load, orminimise the amount of power reflected back from itinto the cable, or both.
RF CABLE MATCHING
For example in many RF situations, we tend to havea relatively fixed LOAD impedance say a resonant
Electus Distribution Reference Data Sheet: IMPMATCH.PDF (1)
Fig.1:
A
generator
dri
ving
a
load
resistance
R
L
and
its
own
internal
resist
ance
R
G
.Fig.2:
How
the
power
fed
to
the
load
varies
as
the
load resistance
is
varied
(red
plot),
and
what
happens
to
the power
wasted
in
R
G
(blue
plot).
IMPEDANCE MATCHING: A PRIMER
quarter-wave antenna, with an impedance of 50 ohms resistive. To minimise interferencewe also have to use coaxial cable toconnect the antenna to a transmitter orreceiver.Now as you may be aware, coaxial cablebehaves as a
transmission line
at radiofrequencies, and as a result it has its own
characteristic impedance
. This simply meansthat because of the inductance-to-capacitance (or L/C) ratio of the cable, RFenergy tends to move along it with aparticular ratio between the electric andmagnetic fields (i.e., voltage to current).In most cases when the energy reachesthe end of the cable, we want as much aspossible to transfer into our load theantenna, in the case of a transmitter, or theinput RF stage in the case of a receiver. For atransmitter this gives the highest power efficiency, whilefor a receiver it gives the best noise performance.And guess what? To ensure this optimum energytransfer, we need to match the characteristic impedanceof the cable to the impedance/resistance of the load. Sofor a 75
Ω
antenna or receiver input, we need to use75
Ω
coaxial cable. For a 50
Ω
antenna we need to use50
Ω
cable, and so on. (see Fig.3)This, then, is an area where impedance matching ISquite important. Because what happens if the cable andantenna (or receiver) impedances are NOT matched isthat some of the RF energy reaching the end of thecable wont be transferred into the load, but isREFLECTED back along the cable, towards the source.This can set up standing waves in the cable (anothercause of power loss, and possibly cable damage), and canalso cause overheating in the transmitter output stage.In a receiver, the mismatch degrades the effectivereceiver gain and noise figure.How do you ensure correct impedance matching inthis type of RF situation? Generally the cable impedanceis more or less fixed, and the antenna impedance may bethe same. But quite a few techniques have been evolvedto tweak the matching between the two: tuned stubs,quarter-wave transformers and so on. Similar things canbe done at the input of a receiver. For details of theseRF matching techniques youll have to refer to a goodRF textbook, like
The ARRL Handbook
.Notice though that so far weve only considered thesituation at the LOAD end of the RF cable. How aboutthe source end isnt impedance matching importantthere too? Less so, especially for transmitters. The mainthing is to ensure that the transmitter output stage willfeed as much RF energy as possible into the cablesinput impedance. There can even be an advantage indeliberately mismatching the impedances (i.e., having thetransmitter impedance much lower than the cable), tominimise power loss in the final stage and also ensurethat if RF is reflected back from the antenna end, mostof it is bounced right back up again. So this situation is abit like the generator in a power station...
VIDEO INTERCONNECTIONS
Now lets consider another area where impedancematching again tends to be quite important: videointerconnections. Here were dealing with signals whichspan from DC up to about 6MHz or so well into theRF range. And we also tend to find ourselves usingcoaxial cables, to reduce interference. So again we needto match the cable impedance and theload impedance, to prevent signalreflection. With video, these reflectionscan cause
ringing
and
ghosting
in thefinal picture. (RingIng is multiple edgeson outlines in the picture, whileghosting is multiple images eachshifted horizontally.)Most video equipment is designed tobe interconnected with 75
Ω
cables, andhas inputs which are designed topresent this same input impedance. Somatching tends to occur automatically,providing you use the correct cables.How about video outputs arethese impedance matched too? Yes,generally they are, not because itresults in maximum signal transfer butbecause with video signals we DONT want any signalreflected back from the load to be reflected back allover again this would make ringing even worse. Sooften the video outputs of cameras, VCRs, DVD playersand so on are fitted with a 75
Ω
series resistor inside, toprovide back termination for the cable (Fig.4). This is just another name for impedance matching at the sourceend of the output cable.Note that just as with our original generator in Fig.1,this added impedance matching resistor produces aninevitable 6dB loss of signal half the video output islost in the resistor. Thats the penalty of impedancematching at the source end, and its why the outputbuffer amplifier in video equipment is usually given again of twice what is needed, to allow for theunavoidable 6dB loss when a cable and correctlyterminated load are connected.
Electus Distribution Reference Data Sheet: IMPMATCH.PDF (2)
Fig.3:
A
transmitter
or
other
source
of
RF
feeding
power
to
an antenna,
via
a
coaxial
cable
or
other
transmission
line.
Heres where
impedance
matching
IS
important...Fig.4:
Video
interconnections,
where
impedance
matching
is
again quite
important.
of 00
Imp Match
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