The sliding electrical contacts found in instrument quality slip rings must reliably conduct signals onto or off of rotating platforms. The signal quality is typically evaluated by measuring the noise injected onto the circuit by the sliding contacts during rotation. For acceptable performance, this noise figure of merit must be under the noise floor for an acceptable signal to noise ratio. As signals have transitioned from analog to digital since the early days of signal slip rings, there has been a significant change in the characterization of this slip ring noise figure of merit due to the bandwidth and amplitudes of the transmitted signals.
