Omnetics Spring 2019 Newsletter

Nano Connectors for Unmanned Applications

As technology continues to evolve, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being utilized and expanding in a variety of industries. You can find them spraying pesticides over crops or using imaging technology to monitor crop growth and health. They are used by public safety and first responders to aid with search and rescue missions and wildfire monitoring. UAVs are established in the oil and gas industry to inspect and monitor equipment and pipelines. Survey engineering has utilized UAV technology to monitor structural health and conduct geological surveys and site inspections. Most of these applications require high precision data acquisition systems along with complex flight control systems and stable communication with ground systems to run smoothly.

Managing size and weight are the main challenges associated with evolving UAV technology. As the need for more instrumentation and electronics on board UAVs grows, designers and engineers are continuously challenged to fit everything on board the aircraft. Designers are always looking for ways to pack in technology without sacrificing performance.

For example, on a typical quadcopter, there will be a flight controller that has multiple circuit boards containing gyros, accelerometers, along with processors and memory required to run the flight software. There’s also GPS, video transmitters, power distribution boards, and black-box data logging. Fitting all of these systems in a package that can maneuver properly for all types of flight missions can prove to be difficult for designers and engineers.

As many UAV’s trend towards miniaturization, connector size and weight becomes a factor in the design. Connectors are needed for routing signals from instruments and flight controllers to control surfaces, motors, and sensors. There are also typically connectors on the circuit boards, and as the boards get smaller in size or higher in density, connectors associated with them must shrink. They are continuously being pushed to their limits. Omnetics’ high density Nano-D connectors, at .025” spacing between contacts, are a great, high-reliability solution for slimming down connectors while keeping all the signals desired on the board.

Miniaturization is not the only technology trend in the UAV industry. High-speed data transfer is becoming a standard requirement in many UAV sub-systems. Next-generation sensors and instruments on board collect data at increasing rates, and data link sub-systems must be able to support these higher speeds and high data rates. Connectors that can support higher speeds are necessary as well. Omnetics’ Nano Coax is one solution that shrinks down a standard 50 ohm coax solution to ¼ the size of a standard SMA.

The Nano Coax is available as a cable to cable, a vertical board mount, and a horizontal board edge mount as a solution for all types of size restrictions and was designed to minimize losses and maintain impedance through the connector. It is also available as a hybrid solution in the Micro-D package or in a circular package (no current board option). These options allow the designer to incorporate multiple coax and signal contacts within one set of connectors, gaining the space and weight needed within the UAV environment.

As on-board flight instruments become more advanced and flight systems evolve, the need for miniaturization of connectors and data link systems is more present than ever. UAV designers choose Omnetics’ connectors for their on board flight hardware because they offer high density, unmatched reliability, and high speed data transfer in a variety of packages.