communication cable
Quick Summary
Cutaway drawings of (top) multipair cable and (bottom) coaxial cable, showing direction of current flow and propagation of electric and magnetic fields.
In electronics, a cable is a conductor or group of conductors used to transmit electric power or telecommunication signals. Communication cables carry voice, computer data, and images as electrical signals to devices like telephones, computers, and televisions.1
Wire transmission guides electromagnetic waves along a conductor, but electrical resistance causes signal loss (attenuation) that increases with distance. To overcome this, repeaters amplify signals over long distances. Common wire media include single-wire lines, open-wire pairs, multipair cables (twisted pairs), and coaxial cables.23
While long-distance telephone cables have largely been replaced by fiber-optic cables, twisted pair and coaxial cables remain standard for short-distance, medium-bandwidth communication, such as in cable television connections and local area networks.2
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