Using COTS products to access new technologies: Molex I-Trac™ Connector

With increasing interest in Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) products, the design community in the Military and Aerospace markets is getting exposed to exciting new products. Along with the benefits of lower cost and less risk in terms of project timescales, COTS products are also giving designers access to an array of leading technologies that have been developed for other markets.

As example of one such product is the I-Trac™ Backplane Connector System from Molex Incorporated, which features a broadside-coupled, skew-equalized design that handles speeds up to 12.5+ Gbps. It offers multiple benefits over other backplane products, including superior impedance control, lower cross-talk and higher overall bandwidth. With its unique open pin-field design, the I-Trac System gives customers the flexibility to assign high-speed differential pairs, low-speed signals, power and ground contacts anywhere within the pin-field.

As a press-fit, mono-block system that can be stacked end-to-end to meet customer pin-count requirements, the I-Trac System features a flexible design for any configuration. It is well-suited for standard and orthogonal architectures in server, storage, and data networking applications. It utilizes the same part numbers for both standard and orthogonal architectures by providing the option to rotate the headers 90 degrees on one side of the mid-plane. This eliminates the need for customers to purchase unique, expensive components normally required with competitive orthogonal products.

The I-Trac System supports quad trace routing, which reduces PCB layer count and the associated cost. Mid-plane PCB layers can be reduced even further by leveraging the orthogonal capabilities of the I-Trac™ System. In an orthogonal architecture, the I-Trac™ System completely eliminates the need for PCB traces through the use of shared vias.

The I-Trac System also features integrated guidance options to ensure superior mating performance, versus non-integrated guided solutions. The I-Trac System power modules are capable of supporting over 250 amps of current per linear inch. Additionally, the guidance, power and signal modules are designed to provide superior mating performance in the proper sequences based on each customer’s unique application requirements.

With the many features of the I-Trac system Molex is helping their customers to simplify their PCB design, improve the performance of their overall system as well as reducing their costs. As such, this is a great example of how COTS products can really help design engineers solve the challenges they face in the future.

With the move to Network Centric warfare, companies like Molex are ideally positioned to support equipment manufacturers because of the broad experience, technologies and products they have developed from being a leader in the Data and Telecommunication industries for many years.

Please enter your details below for samples or further information.