Transmission Line Theory and Application

Summary

This chapter covers transmission line basics. Although the power distribution networks (PDNs) is not considered a transmission line, it has attributes that lend itself to transmission line analysis. The chapter first discusses telegrapher's equations. These are the basis for all transmission line analysis, and they start with a circuit‐level description of the interconnect which consists of R, L, G, and C elements. One of the applications to power integrity that is valuable to the engineer is the damped transmission line approximation. Steady‐state analysis for transmission lines is more easily performed in the frequency domain. Lossless line models are useful and sufficiently accurate for electrically short transmission lines. However, for completeness, there is another interesting concept apparent in the frequency‐domain transmission line theory: the quarter‐wave transformer. The chapter also discusses briefly power planes and grids and how these are used in analyzing PDNs for power integrity problems.