I need to route the 4 pairs of TP ethernet wires from a 10/100BASE-T NIC card through 2 feet of board traces (approx 50 ohms of impedance) back out to Cat5E (100 ohm impedance) cable. Or do I need anything at all?
Can I use matching magnetics on either side of the 50ohm traces to eliminate this disconuity?
such as 1:.7 & 1:1.4?
Thanks in advance
Why not design your PC etch to be 100 ohms instead of 50? This is quite simple to do; the impedance is a function of the trace width, the spacing, and the dielectric constant of the board material. You can adjust the trace spacing and/or width to achieve a 100 ohm characteristic impedance. See any decent EE handbook for the equations (or send me a private e-mail and I can dig them out for you).
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I wish I could Rich but the 2 feet of ~50ohm impedance is a given -- I'm familiar with SI and trace impedances but this 2 feet of ~50ohms cannot be replaced. It's legacy design which would require $$ to replace.
If you have traces that have 50 ohm impedance in relation to circuit board ground, you can use two of them. Connect each of the two wires from the incoming Ethernet twisted pair wire to one of such
50 ohms trace. This arrangement would give you 100 ohms differential impedance for the signal traveling on the wire pair, the same as the UTP cable has.There are applications where 100 ohms differential signal is trasnported over pair of 50 ohm coaxial cables instead of
100 ohms twisted pair. It works.Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.