FCI Expands AirMax VS® High-Speed Connector System

The AirMax VS® connector system provides the most comprehensive family of high-speed, lightweight, flexible, and scaleable connectors available today, making it ideal for a broad range of applications in Data, Communications, and Industrial equipment.

The revolutionary AirMax VS system uses edge-coupling technology and an air dielectric between adjacent conductors to deliver high signal density with the industry's lowest insertion loss and lowest crosstalk, all without the use of costly and space-consuming metal shields. Data rates can scale from 2.5Gb/s to beyond 12Gb/s without requiring re-design of a basic platform.

In addition to superior electrical performance, the AirMax VS family offers design versatility because products can be scaled by varying the number of columns of contacts and the number of contacts per column (3, 4 or 5 differential pairs) and column spacing (2mm or 3mm). AirMax VS connectors allow for mixed pin assignments (differential or single-ended signals or power), to provide additional flexibility to system designers.

The AirMax VS family is comprised of a full set of building blocks for backplane, co-planar, mezzanine and cable-to-board applications.

• Backplane connectors of either gender--vertical receptacles (preferred by datacom customers) or vertical headers (preferred by telecom customers)
• Co-planar connectors
• Mezzanine connectors at stack heights range from 12.5mm to 30mm
• Cable I/O for rear plug-up or front cable applications

MicroTCA™ card edge connectors from FCI enable AMC™ cards to plug directly to a MicroTCA backplane. The surface-mount connectors utilize an optimized PCB footprint and support differential signaling at data rates of 12.5Gbps per lane with very low crosstalk.

A low applied cost is achieved by low-cost surface-mount installation and the fact that no costly hardware, secondary mechanical retention or compensating board stiffeners are required.

The MicroTCA™ standard, under development within PICMG®, creates a physically small but very powerful system in 4U height and 300mm in depth. This not only reduces size, but also cost, making it suitable for a much wider range of applications such as core routers, IP-gateways, base stations, switching centers, and customer premises equipment.

FCI's vertical memory module sockets accept industry-standard DDR2 FB-DIMM (Fully Buffered Dual In-Line Memory Module) assemblies to allow convenient memory expansion in new-generation enterprise servers. The 240-position connectors are designed to accept module assemblies that comply with JEDEC MO-256.

The FB-DIMM interface utilizes high-speed serial differential signaling to increase both memory capacity and bandwidth. The connector's enhanced card-edge contact design protects against stubbing and provides a high-speed interface designed for data rates extending to 4.8 Gb/s. Multi-port Frequency Domain (S-Parameter) and SPICE files are available upon request.

The FB-DIMM connector carries forward the low insertion force socket design developed for FCI's standard DDR2 sockets. The force required to install a memory module is typically less than 22 pounds.

AirMax VS® power modules from FCI provide increased current-carrying capacity for electronic systems. The compact 12mm modules utilize a 1x2 or 2x2 contact configuration rated to 80 Amps with 150 volt voltage rating. Two available mating lengths for power receptacle contacts provide capability for sequential mating of power, ground and signal contacts.

Passages in the insulating connector bodies allow air to flow through the connectors and over a large percentage of the contacts' surfaces so heat escapes more easily. This design feature contributes to the modules' higher current-carrying capacity.

Available for both backplane and co-planar applications, these compact and cost-efficient power modules address the evolution to faster and more powerful processors on add-in cards in data and communications equipment.