VITA 67, is a VPX standard for blindmate coaxial connectors that is designed for use in the backplane and plug-in modules for VPX interfaces. These interfaces allow for RF connectivity enhancements to existing VITA 46 VPX board-to-board connections. This interconnect system delivers high performance and high-density RF connections for VPX board-to-board interfaces. A key component of VITA 67 systems is the VITA 67 SMPM (Mini SMP) Coaxial Cable Assemblies, which enables RF routing of VPX RF signals between modules and units.
This new interface provides a standardized coaxial interface for all high speed data and RF signal routing that can benefit from high density interconnectivity, including video, precision analog, and RF signals.
VITA 67 is designed using OpenVPX/VITA 65 architecture, which is instrumental in ensuring interoperability with VPX slot modules, backplanes, boards, and other components amongst various supplies. In this way, VITA 67 can be integrated alongside other VPX interfaces, such as the serial interfaces 10 GB Ethernet, InfiniBand, PCI Express (PCIE), Gigabit Ethernet, Serial RapidIO, Fiber Channel, and more. VITA 67 systems are designed for rugged applications, such as aerospace, military/defense, ground communication, radar, and avionics and are typically made to MIL-SPEC standards for coaxial cable assemblies. Other common applications for VITA 67 interfaces are electronic countermeasure, land/sea anti-ballistic signal processing, and other command, control, communications, computers intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) applications.
VITA 67 makes use of mini SMP or sub-miniature push-on micro (SMPM) coaxial connectors for the backplane interface between motherboards and daughter boards/cards, but it may also be advantageous to have other coaxial connectors standards on the other end of a VITA 67 coaxial cable assembly, such as 1.85 mm, 2.4 mm, 2.92 mm, or SMA. These connector standards are more common for bulkhead connectors on coaxial connectorized modules and other rack mount RF equipment, which may need to interface with VITA 67 equipment. SMPM connectors are designed to operate to 65 GHz, which exceeds the 40 GHz cut-off frequency of standard SMP connectors. SMPM are also 33% smaller than SMP and maintain the blindmate push-on capability popular with SMP connectors. The cutoff frequency for SMPM connectors is only 2 GHz below 1.85mm connectors (67 GHz), which allows for nearly the full frequency range of use for all of the common coaxial connector types listed previously.