Overview for ATCA, AdvancedMC and MicroTCA Connectors and Hardware

As the telecommunications industry transitions to a converged, all IP, quadruple play network, there are a number of changes that will help enable this transition. One of the key dynamics anticipated is a migration to standards based hardware designs. This will enable the industry to be much quicker to market with lower cost hardware. Tyco Electronics has actively participated in the generation of these new hardware standards by designing and tooling the necessary connectors.

These standards were generated by PICMG, PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group Incorporated, with the focus on telecommunication applications. However, since their initiation they have caught the attention of other industries including aerospace and defense, medical and industrial.

 

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What Is AdvancedTCA?

AdvancedTCA (Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture) is an open industry standard, developed by PICMG 3.0, to create a new blade (board) and chassis (shelf) form factor, tailored to meet the needs of the rapidly changing communications network infrastructure and next generation communication applications. This architecture places high priority on cost effectiveness versus attempting to support a variety of potential future technologies. The architecture is optimized around connectivity requirements of signaling and media gateways, while also providing headroom for higher performance computing elements @ a 99.999% availability rate.

 

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What Is AdvancedMC?

The AdvancedMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) standard, also developed by PICMG, defines the base level requirements for a wide range of high speed mezzanine cards, optimized for, but not limited to, AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA carrier blades.

 

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What Is MicroTCA?

MicroTCA (Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture) is complementary to ATCA, but is optimized for smaller scale and more price sensitive applications. The basic premise of MicroTCA is to support mezzanine boards, conform to the AdvancedMC standard and connect them directly to the backplane.

Tyco Electronics supports AdvancedTCA (ATCA), AdvancedMC and MicroTCA (µTCA) PICMG standards with a full complement of products to meet the wide array of applications and markets where these standard configurations will be used. These products include both the fully compliant interconnects that are specified in the PICMG standards, as well as additional connectors that product designers need to customize their solutions for their specific markets.

For the ATCA standard, Tyco Electronics supplies the Zone 1 Z1 power connector, the Zone 2 Z-PACK HM-Zd high speed connector, and offers many different options for Zone 3 power and high speed signal connectors to midplanes, rear transition modules (RTM) or cable assemblies. Tyco Electronics also provides the guide/keying modules required for front board, backplane, midplane and RTM card alignment and keying. For AdvancedMC, Tyco Electronics provides both the right angle and vertical card edge connectors that are required for ATCA and µTCA applications.

The MicroTCA standard uses Tyco Electronics’ MINIPAK HD two-piece connector for power and the vertical AdvancedMC card edge connector for high speed connections to the backplane.

Tyco Electronics will provide more details on the connectors in the next issue. Stay tuned…