Page 55 - 2021 High-Reliability, Harsh Environment Connectivity eBook

Advances in Wearable Battlefield Systems Require Advances in Connector Technology
Nima Alizadeh, Product Specialist, Amphenol Pcd
Today’s modern soldier relies on a wide range of wearable technologies to accomplish their mission, including GPS enabled radios, night vision googles and sighting systems, Blue Force Tracking, laser designators, and sound suppression systems. System integrators face a number of challenges with these applications, namely reliability, usability, and performance. These same challenges flow down to the enabling connector designs, where they often result in innovative solutions.
The first generations of soldier-worn technologies required traditional connector designs to be reimagined. Recent advances in soldier-worn applications, in areas including power distribution, data scavenging, and audio transmission, have added even more new equipment and devices to soldiers’ arsenal, along with unique electronic requirements based on their intended use. As such, many new soldier-worn devices require innovative new connection technologies. For instance, system integrators are now being challenged to match new technologies, such as conformal wearable batteries (CWBs), with new connector offerings that are equally innovative.
In addition to wearables’ electronic needs, ease of use, user safety, and durability must also be considered as part of the connector selection process. As such, it has become clear that the ideal solution for all these new devices is a new category of connectors, not just one-off connector designs.
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