  Determining the mechanism behind the current cosmic acceleration constitutes
a major question nowadays in theoretical physics. If the dark energy route is
taken, this problem may potentially bring to light new insights not only in
Cosmology but also in high energy physics theories. Following this approach, we
explore in this paper some cosmological consequences of a new time-dependent
parameterization for the dark energy equation of state (EoS), which is a well
behaved function of the redshift $z$ over the entire cosmological evolution,
i.e., $z\in [-1,\infty)$. This parameterization allows us to divide the
parametric plane $(w_0,w_1)$ in defined regions associated to distinct classes
of dark energy models that can be confirmed or excluded from a confrontation
with current observational data. A statistical analysis involving the most
recent observations from type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillation peak,
Cosmic Microwave Background shift parameter and Hubble evolution $H(z)$ is
performed to check the observational viability of the EoS parameterization here
proposed.
