Electrical interfaces and connectors today face signal integrity challenges which weren’t a real concern 10 to 15 years ago. This is especially true for military systems such as radar, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) that continue to grow in complexity.

As the signal density for connectors continues to get tighter and footprints get smaller, problems like crosstalk and the geometry of the launch into/out of the connector pins start to play a major role in the performance of backplane channels. Regardless of the backplane topology, signal integrity analysis follows the same procedure: pre-layout analysis, post-layout analysis, measurements, and correlations between simulations and measurements.  
 
This white paper addresses the following:   
• How to properly perform signal integrity analysis of connectors and backplanes 
• How to leverage simulation techniques to ease this procedure and reduce costs in the long run 
• How to measure the performance of backplane links