Radiation from a single wire earth return power line

Abstract

It is desirable to use existing Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) line for data communication as well as transmitting power in remote areas. The radiation losses of the SWER line to the communication signal is a critical system design parameter. The traveling wave model of a long wire antenna assumes firstly that the antenna is a small number of wavelengths long and secondly that the currents along the line are constant, so that no power lost in radiation. For practical Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) power lines which can be hundreds of kilometers long these assumptions are not valid. The model presented here overcomes these limitations.