Evaluation of Copper Cables as Waveguides in Next-generation Wireline Technologies

Traditionally, copper-based technologies use twistedpair cables as transmission lines. Alternatively, a recent study indicates the possibility of achieving Tbps over those cables by exploiting their high-order guided modes; i.e., a waveguide approach. Even so that study is a fresh breath to ordinary twisted-pair cables as transmission media, it miss a deeper understanding about the features of such modes. In this paper, we investigate the attenuation of 16 guided modes from a CAT5e cable from numerical simulations and determine the aggregate data rate of the cable as a waveguide via Shannon’s capacity. The results indicate the use of CAT cables as waveguides are viable and can achieve 3 Tbps over 10m.