This may sound like a very newbie question but how to drive a signal generated by microcontroller to a coaxial cable, do I need some special kind of connector?
It depend on the line you use.If I suppose that you use a substrat like FR4, you can design a microstrip line at 50 ohms and connect an SMA connector (or BNC, or N) to this 50 ohms line. After you can plugg an SMA cable or any transition like SMA/BNC , SMA/N and so on ...
It depend on the line you use.If I suppose that you use a substrat like FR4, you can design a microstrip line at 50 ohms and connect an SMA connector (or BNC, or N) to this 50 ohms line. After you can plugg an SMA cable or any transition like SMA/BNC , SMA/N and so on ...
Thanks for your reply. Instead of a microstrip can a high speed buffer like https://www.ti.com/product/buf602 will do the job? I found someone mentioning that in an article.
In general a buffer, able to drive the capacitance of the cable is required. The choice will depends from factor like frequency, type of signal (sinusoidal, squarewave, etc.), noise/allowed jitter, etc.
A microstrip (or a stripline) is required to route the signal from generator to the buffer and from the buffer to the cable, in order to avoid impedance mismatch. This is much important at higher frequency. Take into account the the distribution of a squarewave requires to consider the frequency of at least the 5th harmonics.