90 Focus | Connectors of aerial firefighting are being supplied internationally). Time cannot be wasted in unscrewing or unsticking a cumbersome locking mechanism. Hybrid connectors Despite the significant costs involved in engineering hybrid connectors – those that can integrate power, signal and even coaxial pins together within shared connector housings – hybrid solutions have soared in demand over the past few years as customers request increased power throughput, data bandwidths and signal transmission speeds relative to the number of connections in their vehicles and subsystems. As part of this trend, larger and denser hybrid connector products are being released, some with up to 30 pins within a 15 mm plug, and some capable of integrating power pins alongside pins for fibre-optic connections (as well as those for data running on conventional copper wire). Some advanced hybrid connector designs are also making apt use of plastics instead of metals (or limiting the use of metals to select backshells) to bring down their typical cost disadvantage. Integrating fibre optics into connectors and cable assemblies takes particular expertise, and can frustrate conventional manufacturers as optical fibre cannot be soldered. However, in certain contexts, particularly large vehicles such as nextgeneration naval USVs, fibre cables and connectors are a must-have due to the tendency of signals to degrade after travelling 20 m along copper wire. And, as 8K cameras start being integrated into UAV payloads, one should expect an exponential rise in demand for hybrid power-and-fibre connectors. As they are challenging to ruggedise, suppliers of Mil-spec hybrid fibre connectors are limited to those with extensive know-how, and future innovations may extend to the use of specialised lenses rather than mere polished glass at the fibre faces for more scratch-resistant connections. Meanwhile, slightly more conventional hybrid power and data connectors are being rapidly adapted and released for highly demanded newer data protocols, such as USB 3.2 and HDMI – a particular challenge given that HDMI is notorious for interfering with other proximate data transmissions, but one being tackled through judicious engineering. Smart connectivity The general idea behind smart connectors involves integrating microchips inside of contact blocks to give cable assemblies higher functionality – including compression, encryption or checking of transmitted data – thereby transforming them from ‘dumb’ electrical components into intelligent electronic systems. Smart connectors were posited as a theoretical future offering by several companies at least a few years ago, and while they are not yet widely available on the market (due to being highly application-specific in how they must be designed), a few pioneering projects in smart connectivity and cabling have been concluded for medical and defence-based land vehicle integrators. Such projects have included the use of EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) microchips, integrated within connector housings, for simple tasks (in programming terms) such as counting how many times the connector is used, mated or unmated, and alerting whether the connector has been plugged into the correct or incorrect port. In a similar vein, however, cable assembly markets are seeing a proliferation of other solutions using embedded electronics, not necessarily in the connectors themselves but in glands or tubes along the length of the cable. Chips integrated this way can serve as signal converters (for example, turning USB data into Ethernet or RS-232) or boosters; the latter being useful when stretches of cable exceed the ideal lengths for data integrity. Developing smart connectors and cables takes multiple engineering disciplines; to prototype and supply them is far easier when connector manufacturers possess expertise on microelectronics, programming and plastic overmoulding in-house. Also key is the interplay between suppliers and customers as a close understanding of end-users’ PCBs and data networks can closely inform how a smart connection must be architectured (particularly as many vehicle OEMs February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Hybrid connectors combining power and signal pins can be pricey, although some options reduce cost by using plastic rather than metal housings (Image courtesy of Harwin)
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