The Scenario:
You have graduated from APUS and accepted a job at a company called Mega-corp. where I work as the
lead engineer on a project. You are my new assistant. A supplier that we have contracted to manufacture
a printed circuit board for us has called and told us that their equipment cannot manufacture the board to
our specifications because line width of the interconnecting tracks on our board is too thin. They have
offered to build our boards with the thinnest tracks that they can, but they know that this will change the
characteristic impedance of our transmission lines and thus our performance so they stopped and are
asking us whether or not to proceed. The answer to this question is critical to our schedule, but I am
obligated to be in a face-to-face
meeting with a customer all day and won’t be able to do the calculation. You will have to do it for me.
Our load has a 50 ohm impedance. If the supplier’s recommendations are adopted, the characteristic
impedance of our transmission line will change from 50 ohms to 120 ohms.
Instructions:
Compute the reflection coefficient that will result from the supplier’s recommended design change
Determine whether or not VSWR of the new circuit will meet a requirement of “VSWR shall be less than or
equal to 2.0″.
Prepare a short writeup that explains your conclusion and methodology