Differential Pair - Uses

Uses

The technique minimises electronic crosstalk and electromagnetic interference, both noise emission and noise acceptance, and can achieve a constant and/or known characteristic impedance, allowing impedance matching techniques important in a high-speed signal transmission line or high quality balanced line and balanced circuit audio signal path.

Differential pairs include:

• twisted-pair cables, shielded and unshielded
• microstrip and stripline differential pair routing techniques on printed circuit boards

The latter can be considered as a PCB implementation of the well-known twisted-pair cable, a common implementation of the differential pair.

Differential pairs are generally used to carry differential or semi-differential signals, such as high-speed digital serial interfaces including LVDS differential ECL, PECL, LVPECL, SATA, Hypertransport, Ethernet over twisted pair, Serial Digital Interface, RS-422, RS-485, USB, Serial ATA, TMDS, FireWire, and HDMI etc. or else high quality and/or high frequency analog signals (e.g., video signals, balanced audio signals, etc.).