Insertion-Loss Repeatability versus Life of Some Coaxial Connectors

Variation of insertion loss with connect-disconnect cycles was measured for mated pairs of the following types of connectors: GPC-14 [3], GPC-7 [3], type N, and SMA. Two versions of each of the type N and SMA connectors were tested versus life at intervals of 2500 connect-disconnect cycles over a total of 10 000 operations. Measurements were made with a resolution of 0.0001 dB between 2 and 18 GHz. The variations expressed in the standard deviation cr ranged for new connectors from σ <0.002 dB on the best to a maximum of 0.008 dB and increased as much as three times after 10 000 connections. Some causes of the increase are considered for the different connectors.