Intra-system interconnects for digital communications

The electrical performance of three types of cables, namely coaxial, shielded ribbon and flexible-film is characterized for interconnection applications inside high-speed digital systems. Measurements are made of the cable attenuation, signal propagation integrity, bit-error rate, connector discontinuities and crosstalk. The electrical parameters obtained experimentally are used in simulations to predict the bandwidth and range of useful lengths for these cables. The paper highlights the performance-limiting factors such as connector and via discontinuities, and printed-circuit-board wiring losses and the practical density and extendibility limitations are discussed.