Live insertion design approaches

Applications in the telecommunications industry and elsewhere often have the requirement for 100% “up” time. This implies that system upgrades and maintenance must be conducted with power applied and the system operational. When replacing faulty or obsolete cards, removal and insertion must be accomplished without damaging the interface ICs and ideally without disrupting the backplane. This paper investigates the various approaches to IC design intended to facilitate live insertion. A proposal for an industry standard IC test method is proposed