Question
Can the AD8131 drive 8m of twisted pair cat 5 cable with video and audio
information
Answer
As far as I can work out it should be okay to use the AD8131 to drive 8m of
terminated Cat5 UTP cable with video/audio signals. If the line is properly
terminated then it looks just like a 100 Ohm resistance. The limiting factor is
then the series resistance of the cable. This should amount to
and should not cause much signal loss. The circuit of figure 38 (page 11)
should work perfectly well over a length of only 8m with very little signal
degradation. I think this is jsut the kind of application that the AD8131 was
designed for.
If the line is not properly terminated then there will be all sorts of problems
with reflections and signals having different phase lags depending on their
frequency (all of which is simply down to the characteristics of the line).