Patent ID: 7608778

Claim:
A coaxial cable assembly, comprising: at least one internal conductor; a cable shield surrounding the at least one internal conductor; a plurality of sheath wave barriers that are arranged along the cable shield, with each sheath wave barrier comprising two ends, the ends being coupled to the cable shield at coupling points of the cable shield that are spaced from one another, such sheath wave barrier structure serving to dampen sheath waves that are excited on the cable shield due to a radio-frequency magnetic resonance excitation field with an excitation frequency, the excitation field being shielded from the at least one internal conductor with the cable shield; a detection circuit having an output signal line associated with at least one of the sheath wave barriers, said detection circuit generating tapped and evaluable measurement signal on the output signal line characteristic of a load of the respective sheath wave barrier due to the excitation field; and the detection circuit comprises a rectifier element via which a radio-frequency excitation signal excited in the respective sheath wave barrier by the excitation field is rectified, the measurement signal corresponds to the rectified excitation signal, the measurement signal being used by an evaluator to detect a malfunction of at least one of the sheath wave barriers.