I need to connect a SATA device to a development board which does not have a dedicated SATA connector but exposes SATA over a common 2×30 female header instead. My question is what cabling do I need for short length (say 15 cm)? Do I need to bother with cable shielding or is it possible to run SATA reliably over unshielded cable? The setup will operate in a passenger vehicle. The board I use is a phyBOARD-Mira i.MX6.
SATA over unshielded cable
cablesheadersatashielding
Related Solutions
You need to use shielded cable for a 2.4GHz signal, regardless of whether it is underwater or not. Co-axial cable will contain the signal's EM field within the cable, making it very efficient at transmitting with minimal losses. It also has a consistent impedance, and this is important because where you have impedance changes you will get reflections that will degrade signal quality (this is of particular concern at your connectors).
If you don't use a co-axial cable then significant amounts of the signal will propagate into the space around the cables. If water encloses these spaces then this will absorb some of that energy, reducing the signal that makes it to the end of the cable.
For a length of a few inches, twisted pair or not probably won't matter - ribbon cable will likely work just fine in most environments.
For option 2, I assume you mean something like this? (though probably with both ends female)
Those cables should work fine if you can find a source in the length you need - really short ones are probably uncommon though. The fact that those cables aren't twisted for about an inch on each end is why I suspect you'd be fine without twisted pairs.
Those cables are for 2 USB ports, and are keyed so they can't be plugged in backwards - so you could use one set for your USB signal, and the other for the GPIO pins.
Best Answer
SATA employs differential-signalling, which in and of itself, makes it fairly robust in terms of noise immunity. However, the serial data rate is quite high, which may limit exactly which cabling types may work. Over short distances (15cm) even a ribbon cable would likely work, but attention to wiring order may be important. (Note how the SATA cable is wired - differential signals run next to each other, and are separated by ground wires.)