Measurement of the Propagation Constant of a Power Cable Using a Two-Port Time-Domain Reflectometry Technique

This paper presents a two-port time-domain reflectometry(TDR) measurement technique for extracting the complex propagation constant of a cross-linked polyethylene(XLPE) cable. For the extraction, a short pulse transmitted through the cable is measured in the time domain and analyzed in the frequency domain. The propagation constant of a 22.9 kV XLPE cable with a conductor area of 325 is extracted up to a frequency of approximately 2.14 GHz. The measured using a network analyzer and the two-port TDR technique are compared for verification. As a result compared with previous TDR method, the upper possible frequency limit for extracting the propagation constant increases and the measurement error decreases.