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Eric Bogatin, Chief Technology Officer, GigaTest Labs
Michael Resso, Product Manager, Agilent Technologies

The chief difficulty with routine characterization of differential channel paths is the current requirement for SMA connectors to interface with the test equipment. With little extra space available on functional backplanes, and the problem of line loading produced by the SMA stubs, it is not practical to use SMA connectors. This means only specially designed test boards can be routinely characterized. This paper introduces a new methodology for testing the passive interconnects associated with a differential channel in a backplane assembly, which can be used for functional, populated backplane assemblies and shows how the pad layout can be optimized for routine probing without impacting the functional system performance.