Shielded Twisted Pair - Disadvantages

Disadvantages

• Twisted pair’s susceptibility to electromagnetic interference greatly depends on the pair twisting schemes (usually patented by the manufacturers) staying intact during the installation. As a result, twisted pair cables usually have stringent requirements for maximum pulling tension as well as minimum bend radius. This relative fragility of twisted pair cables makes the installation practices an important part of ensuring the cable’s performance.

• In video applications that send information across multiple parallel signal wires, twisted pair cabling can introduce signaling delays known as skew which results in subtle color defects and ghosting due to the image components not aligning correctly when recombined in the display device. The skew occurs because twisted pairs within the same cable often use a different number of twists per meter so as to prevent crosstalk between pairs with identical numbers of twists. The skew can be compensated by varying the length of pairs in the termination box, so as to introduce delay lines that take up the slack between shorter and longer pairs, though the precise lengths required are difficult to calculate and vary depending on the overall cable length.