Proximity effect in transient analysis of radio base stations

Abstract

This paper presents an equivalent circuit model for calculating fast transient current distribution in radio base station system. The new model takes account of both skin and proximity effects in the simulation and achieves a fast computation by using an efficient discretization scheme. The obtained circuit is synthesized using a time domain solver, PSpice. The proposed method is validated experimentally and is applied to evaluate the lightning current in a practical radio base station. A practical system with a 20-m tower and 7 cables is analyzed. Various surge protective devices (SPD) are installed among cables in the simulation. Comparison among different configurations reveals that proximity effect will lead to uneven current distribution in cables. Outer-located cables will carry more currents than others which should be paid more attention.