10 CIRCUITS AS GUIDES FOR WAVES AND S-PARAMETERS
In the previous chapter, I mentioned that waves do not propagate well in conductors. They attenuate down to miniscule levels after traveling a few skin depths. Keep in mind that the conductor actually becomes more lossy at higher frequencies because the current must travel through a smaller cross-sectional area. High-voltage power lines often use multiple parallel wires for each phase partly because of the skin effect. At 60 Hz, the skin depth is about 8mm. By splitting the current into several wires, you get more surface area for an equal amount of copper. Such an arrangement, called conductor bundling, minimizes costs for producing a low-resistance cable. Having several wires for each phase ...
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