In this paper we present and discuss our results for the conductance and conductance fluctuations of narrow quantum wires with two types of disorder: boundary roughness (hard wall confining potential) and islands of strongly scattering impurities within the bulk of the wire. We use a tight--binding Hamiltonian to describe the quantum wire, infinite perfect leads, a two--terminal Landauer--type formula for the conductance, and the recursive single-particle Green's function technique. We find that conductance quantization is easily destroyed by strong scattering. We also find that Anderson localization poses a serious restriction on the high carrier mobility predicted in quantum wires. Conductance fluctuations in narrow quantum wires are not, in general, universal (as in the metallic regime), but can be independent of the wire length over a short range of lengths.

RevTeX 22 pages, SST/9394/32