Signal Integrity is the study dealing with the impact of interconnect’s electrical properties on system performance. The type of problems can be classified into three categories:

• Reduction of signal quality on a point to point interconnection link (e.g. reflections, attenuation)
• Interaction between signals (e.g. crosstalk)
• Radiation of or susceptibility to EMI

Signal Integrity becomes an issue of consideration when the system has:

• High speed signals High density connectors
• Transmission channel that consists of boards from multiple vendors

PCB material, IC technology, connector pin assignment, layout constraints etc. have to be defined.
And in any other case there is a doubt!

Comtel has the right tools, over 30 years of working experience in field of signal integrity and most up-to-date expertise to approach signal integrity issues. Our Signal Integrity engineering team works closely with the Backplane Design team to provide the optimal layout constraints, routing suggestions, stack-ups, materials trade-offs at high speed interconnects, backdrilling necessity and assure the high quality of Comtel products.

Tools that we use

• 2D and 3D electromagnetic field solver parameter extraction software
• Time domain and Frequency domain circuit solvers
• Measurement equipment to acquire TDR and S-Parameters
• Own test cards for popular connectors

Examples of our capabilities

Upon request we can provide sample reports of the following simulations to provide an impression of our capabilities

• 40 Gbps Ethernet characterization of Comtel 14 slot AdvancedTCA Backplane according to PICMG 3.1 R2.0
• 40 Gbps Ethernet – Independent Vendor Qualification – Fermi Lab Report for the 14 slot AdvancedTCA Full Mesh Backplane
• 25 Gbps per differential pair characterization for AdvancedTCA and VPX technologies