Measuring The Velocity Factor of Coax Using an SDR

Recently I had the need to measure the velocity factor of some coax. The velocity factor of a transmission line is ratio of the actual propagation of radio signals through the cable vs the speed of light in a vacuum.

Here’s the coax in question:

It’s RG-6U, for which I have seen published velocity factors ranging from 0.65 to 0.85, depending on the manufacturer and type of dielectric. This coax was laying in my junk box, and I have no idea who makes it, or what the claimed specifications are. The performance of a lot of lower cost coax often widely varies from published specs, as well.

One technique to measure the velocity factor of a transmission line is to use a piece of it as an open stub, which is a section of transmission line connected to another line via a Tee connector. The added transmission line is open at the other end, hence the term “open” stub. The open stub will act as a notch filter for frequencies with a wavelength close to four times the length, in other words the stub is 1/4 wavelength.

For this measurement, I used an SDR (Software Defined Radio) as the measurement device. In this case an SDR-14. To generate RF I used a noise bridge.

The output of the noise bridge is a good source of wide-band RF.

Here is the Tee. On the left is the RF signal, on the bottom is the connection to the SDR, on the right is the open stub.

With the noise bridge connected, but no stub, here is what the SDR spectrum looks like, click to enlarge:

As you can see it is relatively flat. Next, we’ll connect the 1/4 stub (again, click to enlarge):

You can see the dip in the signal level, caused by the stub.

In this case, the stub was 13 ft (4 meters) of cable. Iif the velocity factor was 1.00 the wavelength would be 16 meters, the frequency 18.75 MHz. The frequency of the center of the notch is 15.7 MHz, so the measured velocity factor is 15.7 / 18.75 = 0.84.

Next I used a 9 ft 3 inch (2.85 meter) cable. The wavelength for a velocity factor of 1.00 would be 11.38 meters, the frequency 26.35 MHz. The frequency of the center of the notch was 21.8 MHz, so the measured velocity factor is 0.83.

Using both cables, the total length is 6.85 meters, the wavelength for a velocity factor of 1.00 would be 27.4 meters, the frequency 10.95 MHz. The frequency of the center of the notch was 9.1 MHz, so the measured velocity factor is 0.83.

For this piece of coax, the velocity factor seems to be 0.83, which is a reasonable value.

One thought on “Measuring The Velocity Factor of Coax Using an SDR

  1. Nice. I used this technique with a softock ensemble 3 and a homebrew noise generator to find the resonant freq of a piece of 75ohm coax. Then I calculated the vf and was able to make harnesses for stacking to 2m yagis.
    Thank you for this excellent idea.

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