Sabritec Firewire Technology

Sabritec manufactures connectors for the following protocols: Fibre Channel, Ethernet: 10 Base-T, 100 Base-T, 1000 Base-T,

Ethernet: A standard protocol (IEE 802.3) for a 10-MB/s baseband local area network (LAN) bus using carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) as the access method. Ethernet is a standard for using various transmission media, such as coaxial cables, unshielded twisted pairs, and optical fibers.

Fibre Channel: An industry standard which details computer channel communications over fiber optics at transmission speeds from 132 Mb/s to 1062.5 Mb/s at distances of up to 10 kilometers. Fibre Channel transceivers can either be driven with fiber optic signaling or true differential pair twinaxial signaling with 150 ohm impedance between conductors.

Firewire: A very fast external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 400Mbps (in 1394a) and 800Mbps (in 1394b). Products supporting the 1394 standard go under different names, depending on the company.

USB: Short for Universal Serial Bus, an external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of 12 Mbps. A single USB port can be used to connect up to 127 peripheral devices, such as mice, modems, and keyboards.

Sabritec is currently shipping connectors with Twinax and Quadrax contacts in all of the following formats

This article will cover the basic fundamentals related to triax, quadrax and twinax contacts / connectors. To begin with some terms you may here within the industry.

A very fast external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 400Mbps (in 1394a) and 800Mbps (in 1394b). A single 1394 port can be used to connect up 63 external devices. In addition to its high speed, 1394 also supports isochronous data -- delivering data at a guaranteed rate. This makes it ideal for devices that need to transfer high levels of data in real-time, such as video devices.

Sabritec provides Fibre Channel/Ethernet connectors for firewire applications.

The term Ethernet is a standard protocol (IEE 802.3) for a 10-MB/s baseband local area network (LAN) bus using carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) as the access method. Ethernet is a standard for using various transmission media, such as coaxial cables, unshielded twisted pairs, and optical fibers.

The picture on the right is of an ARINC 600 that is used for Ethernet in the sky. The contacts used in this unit are triaxial and quadrax contacts. The triax contacts which are also called concentric twinax can mate with either a triax or twinax cable. A triax cable is a cable with a center conductor, inner shield and outer shield that are all concentric. The twinax cable is either a twisted shielded pair cable with a single shield or a differential pair cable with a single outer shield. The triax contacts shown are cable type contacts that were designed to mate with a 100 ohm twinax cable. Quadrax and Twinax contacts are ideal for Ethernet 100 Base-T 100 ohm, Fibre Channel 150 ohm and IEEE 1394B Firewire 110 Ohm applications

The quadrax contacts that are included with the ARINC 600 are designed to meet ARINC 600 / 664 Ethernet in the sky. The quadrax connector is four conductors that are enclosed by a single shield. The conductors are diagonally paired to form two differential pairs with mutual perpendicular electrical and magnetic fields thus nearly eliminating all crosstalk. The quad configuration applications exceed 1 Gbit/sec. The quad contact can be used within an MIL-DTL-38999, ARINC 600 and MIL-C-83527 connectors.

The quad splitter that was manufactured for our customer requirement at 1062.5 MBits/sec can be seen below along with the eye pattern test that Sabritec performed on the Quad splitter with twinax connectors.

Fibre channel transceivers can either be driven with fiber optic signaling or true differential pair twinaxial signaling with 100 or 150 ohms impedance between the conductors. Due to severe operational requirements of most commercial and military applications an all copper solution may be preferred instead of fiber optics. Sabritec offers a complete series of differential pair twinaxial connectors and cable assemblies offering the utmost in high speed matched data-on-demand applications. This differential pair impedance and signal to shield characteristic impedance is maintained throughout the connector pair. A true twinaxial connector interface ensures signal integrity minimizing jitter and data rate errors thus degrading the high speed digital signal. With the matched impedance interconnect scheme the data rates can exceed 2 GBits/sec. The twinax contacts can also be used within an MIL-DTL-38999, ARINC 404, ARINC 600 and MIL-C-83527 or a stand alone connector.

Sabritec is capable of testing high speed signaling for eye pattern, jitter, skew, and insertion loss on differential pair 100 ohm and 150 ohm fibre channel and high speed Gigabit Ethernet applications. Our testing capabilities support wide bandwidth (DC to 50 GHz with up to 12.5 GHz Trigger). We utilize the Tektronix CSA8000 to measure the differential pair TDR impedance between twinax connectors, cable assemblies and quad cable fibre channel interconnect systems. Using the CSA8000 ensures the most accurate acquired signal for high speed communications testing. CSA8000 testing features 20 GHz bandwidth with 80E04 sampling module, 35 ps TDR reflected rise time, differential TDR, and crosstalk.

For more information regarding firewire, Fibre Channel, or Ethernet connectors please contact our Applications Engineering Department at (949) 250-1244 or by email.