Rectangular Connectors Move From Mechanical To Electrical

In the past, the selection of Connector Insert was mainly the responsibility of mechanical engineers, because they needed to consider the layout of the entire circuit board or subsystem, and the selection of connectors was more about size and space. Electrical performance usually only considers the rated current of the terminal. The design needs to decide how many terminals are used to transmit signals, the size and shape of the connector body, and the strength of the connector, especially in military projects. In avionics or portable systems, the size of each device is critical, which is a big challenge for connector selection.

Today's connector design has completely changed. It needs to be selected by a dedicated signal integration engineer. The new connector design must also meet the electrical performance requirements, rather than measuring the electrical performance parameters after the entire connector design is completed as in the past. Especially for high-speed signals above 10GHz, electrical performance is very critical. When designing high-performance connectors, whether it is an expensive backplane connector or a common standard PC connector, the first thing to consider is the electrical performance requirements. The selection of connectors has also shifted from packaging engineers to electrical engineers who design circuits.