The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connector assemblies.
Due to their favorable electrical characteristics, coaxial cables and connectors have grown in popularity for interconnecting electronic devices and peripheral systems. The connectors include an inner conductor coaxially disposed within an outer conductor, with a dielectric material separating the inner and outer conductors. A typical application utilizing coaxial cable connectors is a radio-frequency (RF) application having RF connectors designed to work at radio frequencies in the UHF and/or VHF range.
Typically, one or more connectors are mounted to a circuit board of an electronic device at an input/output port of the device and extends through an exterior housing of the device for connection with a coaxial cable connector. Some systems include a plurality of connectors held in a common housing. One particular example of a system that uses multiple connectors is a backplane module having a plurality of board mounted connectors with a separate mating assembly for mating with a daughtercard module. The mating assembly includes a housing holding a plurality of coaxial cable connectors, which are connected to the board mounted connectors by a cable assembly having cable end connectors individually terminated to corresponding board mounted connectors. The daughtercard module is mated with the mating assembly.
Known backplane systems using RF connectors are not without disadvantages. For instance, each of the cable end connectors need to be individually and separately mated with the board connectors, which is time consuming and increases the cost of assembly. Additionally, the spacing between the housing of the mating assembly and the board connectors may be very small, such as less than one inch, making the assembly process difficult and time consuming. Having a large number of connections to make also increases the time and complexity.
A need remains for an RF module that may be mated with a backplane module in a cost effective, timely and reliable manner.