Transmission Characteristic for Structured Cabling Cable

Structure Cabling for horizontal and backbone cabling normally used the balance cable pairs. These cables shall conform to one of the following transmission performance categories depending on the application required to be supported;

Category 3: Transmission characteristics specified up to 16MHz for 100 ohm balance cables.

Category 4: Transmission characteristics specified up to 20MHz for 100 ohm balance cables.

Category 5e: Transmission characteristics specified up to 100MHz for 100 ohm balance cables.

Category 6: Transmission characteristics specified up to 250MHz for 100 ohm balance cables.

Category 7: Transmission characteristics specified up to 600MHz for 100 ohm balance cables.

What Is Skin Effect?

Skin effect is a condition where A.C (alternating Current) tents to travel on the surface of the conductor, as frequency increases.

It is easy to explain by comparing the resistance between these 3 scenarios DC Resistance, AC Resistance in Low-frequency and AC Resistance in High-frequency.

Photo Credit to www.allaboutcircuits.com/

At high frequencies the AC current avoids travel through most of the conductor's cross-sectional area. Therefore, the conductor might as well to be hollow for transmitting current at high frequencies.

At some point, using the high frequencies in transmitting current might reduce the cost of conductor since the conductor itself is not a solid conductor.