Satnews Daily
November 30th, 2012

TE Connectivity... VITA RF Enhancements (Comms)


[SatNews] The VITA 67.0, 67.1 and 67.2 standards, which define the RF connector modules for implementation within the OpenVPX™ architecture, have been...

...ratified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). TE Connectivity's (TE) RF connector modules, which meet these new standards, have been designed for high-reliability, high-density aerospace and defense applications that meet the vibration, environmental and corrosion resistance requirements of VITA 47.

The new VITA 67 standards enhance the ability to add RF capabilities in VITA 46 VPX board-to-board connections. The modules provide a convenient and standardized microwave interface and also meet the needs of C4ISR applications such as ground base stations and communication systems, land and sea anti-ballistic signal processing, avionics and ground-based radar systems, and electronic countermeasures. The modular design allows application-specific configurations with high contact counts in VPX systems. The RF connector modules are compatible with VITA 65 OpenVPX specification, which defines standard profiles for various configurations at the chassis, backplane, slot, and module levels.

RF modules are available with standard four positions (VITA 67.1) or 8 positions (VITA 67.2) of high-frequency coaxial contacts for blind-mate daughtercard to backplane applications. The SMPM based contacts are on a 0.240-inch centerline, and the module interface is designed to maintain excellent channel-to-channel isolation, over 100dB at 30GHz.

The jacks are designed with float on the daughtercard side to accommodate mating tolerances and confirm that the RF interface is bottomed through the full board-to-board tolerance range, maintaining a positive RF ground and supporting frequencies up to 40 GHz. The modules offer a contact float of 0.079 inch, radial misalignment of ±0.010 inch, and a design that provides reliable blind-mating. Contacts are available for a wide range of flexible and semi-rigid cable.