Southern Luzon State University

College of Engineering

ECE Department

ECE08L

TRANSMISSION MEDIA & ANTENNA SYSTEM LABORATORY

Experiment No. 1
Standing Waves

Submitted by:

Gutierrez, Danah Kayla R.

Maldo, Bryan H.

Pagal, Aimy

Repil, Alexis June O.

Soledad, Ervin Joseph D.

Yanoria, John Dynard

BSECE V-GH

Date of Submission: September 18, 2019

RATING

Engr. Zoren P. Mabunga

INSTRUCTOR
II. INTRODUCTION
In physics, a standing wave, also known as a stationary wave, is a wave which
oscillates in time but whose peak amplitude profile does not move in space. The
peak amplitude of the wave oscillations at any point in space is constant with time, and the
oscillations at different points throughout the wave are in phase. The locations at which the
amplitude is minimum are called nodes, and the locations where the amplitude is maximum
are called antinodes.
Standing waves were first noticed by Michael Faraday in 1831. Faraday observed
standing waves on the surface of a liquid in a vibrating container. Franz Melde coined the
term "standing wave" (German: stehende Welle or Stehwelle) around 1860 and demonstrated
the phenomenon in his classic experiment with vibrating strings.
This phenomenon can occur because the medium is moving in the opposite direction
to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a result of interference between two
waves traveling in opposite directions. The most common cause of standing waves is the
phenomenon of resonance, in which standing waves occur inside a resonator due to
interference between waves reflected back and forth at the resonator's resonant frequency.
For waves of equal amplitude traveling in opposing directions, there is on average no
net propagation of energy. There are two examples of standing waves the moving medium
and the opposing waves.
As an example of the second type, a standing wave in a transmission line is a wave in
which the distribution of current, voltage, or field strength is formed by the superposition of
two waves of the same frequency propagating in opposite directions. The effect is a series
of nodes (zero displacement) and anti-nodes (maximum displacement) at fixed points along
the transmission line. Such a standing wave may be formed when a wave is transmitted into
one end of a transmission line and is reflected from the other end by
an impedance mismatch, i.e., discontinuity, such as an open circuit or a short. The failure of
the line to transfer power at the standing wave frequency will usually result in attenuation
distortion.
In practice, losses in the transmission line and other components mean that a perfect
reflection and a pure standing wave are never achieved. The result is a partial standing wave,
which is a superposition of a standing wave and a traveling wave. The degree to which the
wave resembles either a pure standing wave or a pure traveling wave is measured by
the standing wave ratio (SWR).
Another example is standing waves in the open ocean formed by waves with the same
wave period moving in opposite directions. These may form near storm centers, or from
reflection of a swell at the shore, and are the source of microbaroms and microseisms.

III. OBJECTIVES
1. To setup the standing waves formation on a transmission line and observe their maxima
and minima using frequency domain method.

IV. MATERIALS
1. Transmission line Trainer/analyzer
2. 10MHz CRO with X-Y facility
3. Transmission Lines

V. PROCEDURES
1. Connect the Transmission Line Analyzer and CRO to a suitable AC power outlet.
2. Switch the equipment ON.
3. The LCD of TLA will light up and start displaying digits.
4. Bring the CRO into X-Y mode of operation. This is done by disabling the internal time
base of CRO. Usually this is done by rotating the time base switch to its extreme. Check
your CRO for exact operational controls.
5. In X-Y mode the CRO will only show a bright spot on the CRT.
6. Adjust the intensity on CRO to get the bright spot.
7. Adjust the position of the spot with vertical and horizontal position controls.
8. Now connect a BNC lead from TLA Horizontal output to CRO X or Horizontal input.
9. CRO will start displaying horizontal line.
10. Adjust the AC/DC/GND switch at CRO X input to DC.
11. Adjust the line length to 10cm by adjusting the X gain.
12. Adjust the vertical position of the line to three graticules below center line by adjusting
CRO Y position control.
13. Adjust the AC/DC/GND switch at CRO Y input to DC.
14. Now connect a BNC lead from TLA vertical output to CRO Y or vertical input.
15. Adjust the attenuator setting of TLA with all switches in upward direction; indicating full
power being applied to the load.
16. There will appear another line on top of the previously adjusted base line.
17. Adjust the Y input attenuator of scope to separate the line by six divisions.
18. This line will indicate the direct power level available at load terminal.
19. Adjust the tune control on TLA to read a frequency around 100MHz.
20. Adjust the span control fully clockwise.
21. The upper line will shoot a little overshoot and sag somewhere.
22. Press 1dB attenuator. The top line would come down a little bit. See that the top line
distortion is within 1dB overall. Overall flatness is specified to be within 1dB overall.
23. Neglect any distortion near both ends as this region reflects the limiting specification
range of equipment.
24. The load output terminal provides an unbalanced internal source impedance of 50 ohms
with directivity better than 20dB.
25. Now connect a transmission line at the Load Out terminal through a suitable connector.
26. The scope shall display a standing wave pattern if the line is open circuited or shorted.
27. This is due to reflections from the other end f the line due to impedance mismatch. A
coaxial BNC lead shall suffice as a real transmission line.
28. Connect the other end of the transmission line to the Load input via suitable adapter.
29. The underlying principle is that when a transmission line is terminated into its
characteristic impedance, no power is reflected from the end of the line and hence there
are no standing waves being formed in the line.
30. Rotate the impedance measure control to fully counter-clockwise.
31. This will present a short circuit at the end of the transmission line in place of load.
32. The LCD shall read 0 ohms in this case.
33. Hence there will be a current maxima or voltage minima being formed at the load end of
the transmission line. Note the waveform on the CRO in this case.
34. Now rotate the measure control fully clockwise. The LCD read around 1000 ohms as the
load termination. Note the waveform on the CRO.
35. There will be a voltage maxima and current minima being formed at the load end.
36. Please note that the maxima and minima simply change their places in the two cases.
37. Or that the voltage maxima become voltage minima and current minima becomes current
maxima when the load termination is changed from zero to infinity.
38. Note that they pass through the condition when minima when the load is the
characteristic impedance.
VI. EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP

Load
Oscilloscope

Transmission Trainer

BNC cable

XY cable

Figure 1 Experimental setup of Activity 1 Standing Waves

VII. RESULTS
a. Standing Waves in an Open Circuit Transmission Lines

Figure 2 The CRO output for Standing Waves in an Open Circuit

Transmission Lines

In this resonant transmission line, we set the impedance to infinity (∞) or the maximum
possible impedance (in this case almost 1000 ohms) to simulate the open transmission line. The
curved line shows the standing waves of an open circuit transmission line which ends to a
maximum value, why? According to the Ohm’s law (V=IR), the higher the resistance/impedance
the higher the voltage, thus showing that the curve of an open line must terminate with the
highest voltage reading which is shown in the figure above.
 b. Standing Waves in a Short Circuit Transmission Lines

Figure 3 The CRO output for Standing Waves in a Short Circuit

Transmission Lines

In this resonant transmission line, we set the impedance to zero (0) or the minimum possible
impedance (in this case 0 ohms) to simulate the shorted transmission line. The curved line shows
the standing waves of a closed-circuit transmission line which ends to a minimum value, why?
According to the Ohm’s law (V=IR), "the higher the resistance/impedance the lower the voltage,
thus showing that the curve of an open line must terminate with the lowest voltage reading which
is shown in the figure above.

VIII. DISCUSSION

In this experiment, the group made an experimental setup to observe the maxima and minima
of the standing waves formation on a transmission line using frequency domain method. The
system includes Oscilloscope; to display the CRO output of the standing waves, Transmission
Trainer; to adjust values and be connected to other equipment to be used for the desired output,
BNC cable; to connect the impedance measure control or the span control of the transmission
trainer to the frequency part on the other half of the trainer, XY cable; to be used as connecting
medium for the horizontal and vertical part of the inputs and outputs and lastly, the load; used as
the load of the entire operation.
During the first part of the experiment following the procedures, the oscilloscope displays a
bright spot which what must be shown based on the fifth step. We adjust the position of the
bright spot by sing the vertical and horizontal position control. Then, we connect the BNC cable
to the CRO X from the TLA which results to a horizontal line displayed in the oscilloscope. To
be able to reach the 10mm, we adjust it through the controls and make it from cross to cross
shown on the screen of the oscilloscope. We also connect a BNC cable to the CRO Y from the
TLA to produce a vertical line. Pressing the 1dB attenuator makes the top line come down a little
bit. After connecting a transmission line through a suitable connector to the Load Out terminal,
the oscilloscope displays a standing wave pattern. Adjusting the necessary controls, we get the
desired output. Adjusting the impedance measure control fully clockwise, the oscilloscope shows
the open circuited standing wave of the transmission line and when the impedance measure
control is adjusted fully counter clockwise, the oscilloscope shows the short circuited standing
wave of the transmission line.
IX. CONCLUSION

As we can see from the pictures, when the transmission line is terminated to its
characteristic impedance, standing wave is very minimal. The reason for this is because there
is no power being reflected to the source and all the power is absorbed by the load. We can
also observed that the standing wave is maximum when the transmission line is terminated to
either open or short load. The explanation of this can be seen in the formula of the standing
wave ratio in terms of impedance. The formula of standing wave ratio can be either
characteristic impedance divided by load impedance or load impedance divided by
characteristic impedance depending whichever gives a value greater than one. From the
formula we can see that if the load impedance is either zero or infinity, both will result to the
value of infinity. We can also form the waveform, the current minima and the voltage
maxima being formed when the load impedance is high enough or is terminated in the open
load. Also the current maxima and voltage minima is formed when the load impedance is
zero or is terminated to a short load. The explanation of this is because the sum of the
incident and reflected current waveforms in minimum at open while maximum at the short
and the sum of the incident and reflected voltage waveforms is maximum at the open and
minimum at the short.