At a glance

CoaXPress – CXP – is a digital interface standard developed for high-speed image data transmission in professional and industrial imaging applications such as machine vision, medical imaging, life sciences, broadcast, and defense. 

A unique feature of CoaXPress is that it uses coaxial cables for bidirectional data communication, including high-speed video data streaming from the camera to the host PC frame grabber, plus a command-and-control uplink to the camera. In addition, the interface is easily scalable, with cameras using 1, 2, 4, 8 or even 16 connections to reach the highest bandwidth available in the industry. This makes CoaXPress the interface of choice for high-speed imaging. 

The CoaXPress standard is hosted by the JIIA (Japan Industrial Imaging Association) since 2010, with working groups from companies around the world. There are more than 50 companies around the world providing CoaXPress compliant products.

Technical summary
  • High-speed data rates
    up to 12.5 Gbps over a single coaxial cable and scalable for multiple cables (for example, at CXP-12, 4 cables give 50 Gbps, 8 cables give 100 Gbps)
  • Connectors
    Use of BNC, DIN1.0/2.3 and micro-BNC (HD BNC) connectors
  • Long Cable Lengths
    In excess of 100m at 3.125 Gbps and 35m at 12.5 Gbps
  • Latency
    Real time behavior with fixed, low-latency transmission. No-jitter low-latency camera triggering capability.
Technical summary
  • Cables
    Flexible and reliable through use of standard coaxial cables Cost-effective cabling solutions
  • Ease of integration
    Image data, communication, control and power over a single coaxial cable
  • Hot pluggable
  • Royalty-free solution

Latest features and future developments 

The current v2.1 version of the CoaXPress standard was released in February 2021. The latest enhancements including improvements since v2.0 are: 

  • Speed: A key aim of CoaXPress is to support the fastest cameras on the market. CoaXPress v2.0 adds two additional speeds – 10 Gbps (CXP-10) and 12.5 Gbps (CXP-12). This doubles the cable bandwidth compared to CXP-6, so for example a 4-core cable can provide 4 GBytes/sec of data continuously and reliably from camera to frame grabber. 
  • Multi-destination or data-sharing: To allow for even faster cameras, v2.0 allows a single camera to send data to more than one frame grabber, which could be in different PCs. 
  • Uplink Speed: The uplink speed is also doubled for CXP-10 and CXP-12, so allowing trigger rates over 500kHz. 
  • Micro-BNC: A new connector type, the Micro-BNC, is added. It is compact and robust, while also supporting CXP-10 and CXP-12 speeds. 
  • GenICam: Support for the industry standard GenICam is further enhanced by the addition of GenICam-compliant event packets. 
  • GenDC: Since 2.1 CoaXPress includes support for GenDC, a GenICam module that defines how image data is structured, transmitted or received independent of its format, including complex image formats such as 3D. 
  • CoaXPress over Fiber is an add-on to the version 2.1 specification. It enables fiber optic links to work with the CoaXPress protocol. 

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