8 - Transmission Lines

Abstract

As wireless designs become more prevalent and as digital designs reach higher and higher frequencies, a thorough understanding of transmission line theory is becoming increasingly important. With the aid of graphical representations of analog and digital signals, it is possible gain a solid intuitive understanding of transmission lines. Moreover, this approach requires little mathematics. Unfortunately, many engineers leave school having been exposed to transmission lines only during a few lectures in an electromagnetic fields class. In such classes, transmission line theory is taught with wave equations and a lot of difficult calculus. A transmission line is a set of conductors used for transmitting electrical signals. In general, every connection in an electric circuit is a transmission line.