Stochastic transmission line analysis via polynomial chaos methods: an overview

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of polynomial chaos (PC) based methods for the statistical analysis of transmission lines. The underlying idea of PC is to represent stochastic line voltages and currents as expansions of predefined orthogonal polynomials. The determination of the expansion coefficients allows obtaining pertinent statistical information and is generally much faster than running, e.g., a Monte Carlo (MC) analysis. There exist several approaches to calculate the PC expansion coefficients. The article briefly reviews virtually all existing methods, whilst focusing on the popular and accurate stochastic Galerkin (SG) method as well as on the recent, more efficient and non-intrusive formulation of the so-called stochastic testing (ST) method. These two techniques are introduced by way of a simple illustrative example, i.e., a single-wire line running above a ground plane. Numerical comparisons in terms of accuracy and efficiency are also provided for a four-wire line with nonlinear terminations. Index Terms - Multiconductor transmission lines, polynomial chaos, statistical analysis, stochastic Galerkin method, stochastic testing, uncertainty, variability analysis.