Solid or Stranded Conductor, Which one is better?

Solid Conductor Cable

Solid inner conductor means a single core wire. It usually consist of bare copper wires 22 to 26 AWG (American Wire Gauge units). Such as UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) Cat5e is 24AWG. A single core wire can provide superior electrical characteristics to keep stable over a wide range of frequencies. It have a lower DC resistance and lower susceptibility to high frequency effects. So that it can transfer longer distance and have higher data rates than stranded cables.

Surely solid conductor cables have disadvantages. The larger the core, the less inflexible the cable. If the cables were bent, they are very likely to be broken or affect the network performance.

Stranded Conductor Cable

Stranded conductor cables are very commonly used today. It means cables use multi-cores wire as inner conductor. Such as six or seven strands are used to surround a single wire in the center. The stranded wires form a conductor with the similar diameter to a solid cable. But the conducting area is smaller than that of a solid cable due to the smaller diameters of each individual conducting wire strand. Stranded cables are flexible. It have a smaller bending radius.

But stranded conductor cables can cause higher insertion loss for their smaller conductor. It have high DC resistance which causes signals dissipation as increased heat during long distance transmission. Another defect of stranded cables is that they are more expensive and more complex to manufacture.

Applications of Two Cables

Solid conductor cables support longer distances It can be installed in the walls, up through ceilings, or between work areas on the same floor. But attention should be paid on that solid cables shouldn’t be bent, flexed, or twisted repeatedly.

Stranded conductor cables are used for short runs between network interface cards and wall plates or between concentrators and patch panels, hubs, and other rack mounted equipment, as they will be constantly plugged, removed or bent. Stranded conductor cable is much more flexible.