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WIRES & CABLES

6.1 Which way? Plain old metal wires turn up a lot in electrical systems, electronics, and even in computing and optoelectronics. The metal patterns used for microwave striplines, and even the connections inside integrated circuits are essentially cables or wires. There is also a serious sub-industry as part of the Hi-Fi e uipment business that sells fancy connecting cables, often at high prices. !iven how many cables there are, and the wide range of tas"s they perform, it is seems a good idea to loo" at their properties with some care. #n general, metal cables and wires serve two purposes. To carry electrical power from place to place. To carry information-bearing signals from place to place.

$ow in order to communicate a signal we have to transfer some energy from place to place. This is because a signal without energy cannot have an effect upon a receiver. Hence it doesnt matter whether the wires are for simple power or signal transfer, power or energy has to be transferred in both cases. %e therefore need to establish how this can ta"e place. To get an initial idea of what is going on, consider the situation shown in figure &'(.

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This shows a wire hung between two houses. #t is being used to send signals from one house to the other. The transmitter is a switch )*orse +ey, and a battery, the receiver is a light bulb. )%e are deliberately ma"ing this as simple as possible to avoid all the details of fancy signal communications e uipment-, %ith stunning originality and imagination, we can call the houses . and /. )%e could call them 0unpayin or whatever, but that would 1ust ma"e the following e uations longer to type-, .n eavesdropper wants to find out, 2%hich house are the signals being sent from34 5an he tell this by e6amining the signals on the wire3 For his eavesdropping he 1ust has a voltmeter and a current meter which he can attach. /y using the voltmeter he can determine the potential difference between the wire and the ground. 7sing the current meter he can determine which way any currents flow in the wire. $ote that, as is usual, 8* signals on wires actually re uire a conducting loop. This provides a complete circuit for the current to flow around. #n between the signal source and its destination this also means there are two conductors, and any applied voltage will appear as a potential difference between them. #n this case one of the conductors is actually the ground )earth, upon which both houses sit. 9o the eavesdropper also measures voltages with reference to the ground. #n the situation described he only notices the current in the wire and ignores the current flow in the ground. $ow so for power to flow from house to house )i.e. from transmitter to receiver : or from battery to light bulb in this case, we re uire the product of the observed voltage and the observed current to be non ;ero. The voltmeter and ammeter used by the eavesdropper are center ;ero types that show both a magnitude and a sign. The transmitter )battery, can be two possible locations, and can be arranged to apply either a positive or a negative potential to the wire, There are therefore four possible situations which may arise whenever the switch is closed and energy flows from battery to bulb. These are illustrated in figures &'<a to &'<d.

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The results obtained by observing the meters in each case can be listed as follows if we define a flow of conventional current from . to / as having a positive sign we can draw up the following table of results.
Figure &'<a =bserved voltage >ve 5onventional 5urrent Flow . to / )>ve, 9ign of

>ve

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&'<b &'<c &'<d

:ve >ve :ve

/ to . ):ve, / to . )-ve, . to / )>ve,

>ve :ve :ve

/y loo"ing at this table we can see that we cant decide where the signal source is located simply by e6amining the current or voltage alone. However by considering their product )i.e. the power, we obtain a value whose sign tells us where the signal is coming from. This is because tells us the rate and direction of energy flow along the wires. .lthough in this case we arent noticing the current flow in the ground we would find that it would tell us the same thing if we could find the very low current density and voltage in the ground itself since both of these always have to opposite sign to the wires.

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6.2 Energy and Moving Electrons #n the above we only too" an interest in the voltage )potential difference, and the current. The simple school te6tboo" model of electricity tends to describe electricity as being similar to water flowing in a pipe. #n fact this isnt a very good way of loo"ing at what is happening as it tends to hide some important features. To appreciate this, we can picture the electrons flowing along the wire as illustrated in figure &'D.

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Here we imagine the free electrons that can provide the moving charges that constitute the current as having a uniform number density inside the material of electrons per unit volume. The current is the result of these moving along the wire at an average velocity, . %e can now define the current to be

where is the number of electrons that cross a boundary cutting across the wire in a time, , and is the charge per electron. /y measuring the current in .mps, and the charge in 5oulombs, we can say that electrons per second. 9ince we "now the density of the electrons in the wire we can turn this number into an effective volume of the electron distribution that will cross the boundary per second. This volume can be ta"en as a bloc" of the free charges which e6tends along a length, , of the wire and covers its entire cross sectional area. Hence we can determine the length .mps corresponds to

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%hich implies that the free electrons are all tending on average to move this distance per second. Hence we find that the mean velocity of the moving electrons is

Bets now ta"e an e6ample of a copper wire with a s uare cross section of (mm by (mm. Avogadros Number tells us the number of atoms )or molecules, per gram-mol of the materal. The value of this number is &'E<<F G (E <D. . mol can be regarded as the atomic weight divided by the valancy value of the material. 5opper has an atomic weight of &D'FH, and a nominal valancy of one. %e can therefore say that &D'FH grams of copper will contain &'E<<F G (E <D atoms, and each on contributes one free electron. Thus each gram of copper will contain &'E<<F G (E<DI&D'FH J K'HLMD G (E<( free electrons. The density of copper is M'KF gramsIcc. 9o the above is e uivalent to saying that each cubic centimetre of copper will contain M'HMDE G (E << free electrons per cc : i.e. in 9.#. units we can say that J M'HMDE G (E<M per cubic metre. The wires area is (E-& m< so ta"ing a current of one .mp for the sa"e of e6ample, we can use e6pression &.< to calculate a mean electron velocity of 1ust under E'ELF mmIsecond. This result is an interesting one for two related reasons. Firstly, it is many orders of magnitude less than the speed of light in vacuum. Hence we can immediately see that it doesnt correspond to the velocity of signals, or energy transfer, along metal cables. #f it were simply the movement of the electrons that carried the signal we might have to wait a very long time indeed for a reply when spea"ing over a transatlantic telephone cable- . less obvious reason becomes apparent if we now wor" out the "inetic energy of the above bloc" of electrons. 8ach has a mass, , of the order of K G (E-D( +g. 9o the "inetic energy passing the boundary per second will be

which, using the above values come to ('F G (E -<E %atts. $ow it must be remembered that the above calculations are only rough, handwaving, estimates of the correct values. )For e6ample, the effective mass of an electron will change when it is in a material., However, this result shows that the rate at which the electrons move, and the amount of "inetic energy they carry, can be much smaller than we might e6pect. For e6ample, it is common in
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domestic house wiring for a current of an .mp or so to support power levels of a few hundred %atts : i.e. many orders of magnitude greater than the value calculated above. %e therefore have to conclude that the real burden of the signal and energy transfer is being carried elsewhere, and not simply by the electrons in the wires.

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6.3 EH Fields and Domestic Waveguides. #n fact, we can now reveal that it is the electromagnetic fields that surround metal wires that actually carry the signal energy. Here we can e6amine three standard cases, starting with one that loo"s li"e the house to house system we loo"ed at earlier. #n each case it turns out to be the product of that carries the power and the electrons are almost irrelevant e6cept as a convenient place to pin or control the fields. The wires )more precisely, the electrons inside the wires, act to guide the fields, but it is the fields that do the real wor"#n terms of electromagnetism, we can define the power flow in terms of the Poynting Vector .s a vector, this uantity has both a magnitude and a direction, so it in indicates both the rate of energy flow, and the direction in which the energy travels. To determine the total flow from one place to another we would need to integrate the value of over a suitable surface which is placed so that any path from place to place must pass through the surface. For wires, waveguides, etc, this usually means a plane surface perpendicular to the wires, located between the signal source and destination. %e also should average the value over a suitable time )often one cycle of a periodic signal, to obtain a mean or average power value.

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Figure &'H shows the 8-field )solid lines, and H-field )bro"en lines, that are set up in the "ind of arrangement considered in figures &'( and &'<. Perhaps surprisingly, the ground tends to act as a fairly good conductor so far as the 8H fields are concerned. Hence we usually obtain a pattern similar to that between a small wire and a flat conducting metal plane. )%hich is often called a ground plane for reasons that should now be obvious-, 9ince the metal is a good conductor, the 8-field lines stri"e it normal to the surface, and the H-field at the surfaces is parallel to the surface. #f we analyse the shapes in detail we discover the the field lines are actually all circles or arcs of circles.

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. good conductor acts li"e a mirror. %e can therefore say that the fields we see above the ground behave 1ust as if there was an image of this pattern below ground level. =f course, it only loo"s li"e this when we are above ground. However it leads to the related result shown in figure &'F which shows the field between a parallel pair of wires used as a twin feeder to convey signal energy. For the illustrations the top wire in each case is assumed to be given a positive potential w.r.t. the ground plane or lower wire. The current flow is assumed to be away from the observer in the top wire, and towards the observer in the ground plane or lower wire. This then gives the 8-field and H-field directions indicated by the arrows on the diagrams. /y the right-hand rule we can see that everywhere the Poynting Aector : and hence the energy flow : is away from the observer. #f we reverse both the potentials and the currents )as would happen if the signal source reversed the polarity of the signal they are applying, both and would change signs. Hence the Poynting Aectors sign would remain unchanged. The behaviour of the fields is therefore consistent with the currents and voltages we considered earlier. %e can therefore use the Poynting Aector to show us the direction energy )and hence signal, flow. #f we ignore the 8arth wire, which is present )in the 7+ at least-, purely for safety reasons, normal house mains wiring is a form of twin feeder and acts
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essentially as a form of waveguide to direct the electrical power from generating station, via $ational !rid, to the lights, TAs, etc, in our house. )#n fact, at the ris" of complicating things, long distance power transmission often uses three wires as this is more efficient, but we can ignore that here as being a detail., . pair of wires acting as a twin feeder is fairly cheap to ma"e, and easy to use. #t does, however suffer from two disadvantages. Firstly, the 8H fields spread for some distance around the wires. .s a conse uence, any pieces of metal or dielectric near the wires will be in the field. Hence signal power may be lost by being coupled onto these ob1ects, or the signal propagation behaviour altered by their presence. 9econdly, at high fre uencies the wires will tend to act li"e as an antenna and may radiate some of the power rather than guiding it to the intended destination. To minimise these effects it is advisable to "eep the spacing between the wires, and their diameters, as small as we can. #t is also common to wind the wires around each other the wires together and ma"e a twisted pair. #deally we want to "eep other ob1ects much further away than the wire spacing, and "eep the wire spacing much smaller than the free-space wavelength of the highest fre uencies that we wish to carry along the wires. 7nfortunately, meeting the above re uirements can be difficult at times. .lso, thinner wires are li"ely to have a larger resistance, so will waste signal power heating up the wires. To overcome these problems it is common to use alternative forms of wiring or guiding. The topic of signals guides and fibres is a comple6 one, so here we will only briefly mention one widely used solution to the above problems : the Coaxial Cable. =ften called 5o-a6 . 5oa6ial 5able consists of two conductors, one of which surrounds the other. %e can thin" of this as a variation on the wire-over-a-groundplane shown in figure &'H. However we now bend the ground plane and wrap it around the wire. The result is a wire inside a tube of conductor with an insulating space in between. The two conductors usually have circular symmetry, and share the same long a6is )hence the name,. The space between them is also usually filled with a suitable dielectric material to "eep the conductors apart and help the cable maintain its overall si;e and shape. The result has a typical form shown in figure &'&. #n this case the 8-field is radial and the h-field is circumferential. .s before, the power is carried by the 8H fields. However unli"e the previous e6amples, this field is now all inside the cable. This means that the signal energy guided along the co-a6 is unli"ely to be affected by ob1ects which come near to the outside of the cable.

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The corollary of the above is that any unwanted signals )interference or noise, from elsewhere will now also be unli"ely to in1ect itself onto the cables. 5o-a6 therefore falls into a general class of cables and guides which is said to be shielded. #t efficiently guides the power from place to place, with little chance of any of the signal being affected by the cables surroundings. For this reason co-a6 is particularly useful when we are dealing with low-power andIor high fre uency signals. Hence it is used a great deal in radio systems and in sensitive measurement e uipment. For similar reasons, many signal and radio cable connectors also have a co-a6ial form. ummary ?ou should now understand the way in which wires and cables carry signals and signal energy in the form a an 8H field pattern. ?ou should also now "now that although the charge carriers )free electrons, move in the conductors they only carry a tiny amount of energy, and move much slower than the actual signals. ?ou should now be able to see the underlaying similarity of a wire over a returnIground plane, a pair of wires acting as a twin feeder, and a co-a6ial cable. The useful property of co-a6 in "eeping signals shielded and preventing them from being lost should also be clear.

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