Telecom PCB

5G communication challenges to the PCB industry

As the fifth-generation mobile communication network, the most important applications of 5G are industrial and enterprise applications. Its importance is no less than a new industrial revolution. Any industry can improve efficiency through 5G, and some industries benefit from 5G technology. Derive new application scenarios and business models, which may introduce new competitors, and the status of incumbents may be subverted.

Taking the PCB industry as an example, the industry generally believes that in the next three to five years, 5G communications will surpass today’s two major application markets, smart terminals, and automotive electronics, and become the number one engine driving the growth of the PCB industry. At the same time, 5G also puts forward higher and stricter requirements on PCB technology, which can be said to be both opportunities and challenges.

1. Material Requirements of Telecom PCB

A very clear direction for 5G PCB is high-frequency and high-speed materials and board manufacturing. Wu Jun, vice president of research and development of Yibo Technology, pointed out that in terms of high-frequency materials, it is obvious that leading material manufacturers in traditional high-speed fields such as Lianmao, Shengyi, and Panasonic have begun to deploy high-frequency plates and launched a series of new material. This will break the current Rogers dominance in the high-frequency sheet field. After the healthy competition, the performance, convenience, and availability of materials will be greatly enhanced. Therefore, the localization of high-frequency materials is an inevitable trend.

In terms of high-speed materials, Wu Yuanli, purchasing manager of Xingsen Technology, believes that 400G products need to use M7N and MW4000 equivalent materials. In the backplane design, M7N is already the lowest loss option. In the future, backplanes/optical modules with larger capacity will require lower loss materials. The combination of resin, copper foil, and glass cloth will achieve the best balance between electrical performance and cost. In addition, the number of high-levels and high density will also bring reliability challenges.

2. Telecom PCB Requirements for PCB Design

The selection of plates must meet the requirements of high frequency and high speed, impedance matching, stacking planning, wiring spacing/holes, etc. must meet the signal integrity requirements, which can be from loss, embedding, high-frequency phase/amplitude, mixed voltage, Start with the six aspects of heat dissipation and PIM.

5G communication challenges to the PCB industry

3.  Telecom PCB Requirements for Fab Process Technology

The enhancement of the functions of 5G-related application products will increase the demand for high-density PCBs, and HDI will also become an important technical field. Multi-level HDI products and even products with any level of interconnection will become popular, and new technologies such as buried resistance and buried capacitance will also have increasing applications.

In addition, PCB copper thickness uniformity, line width accuracy, interlayer alignment, interlayer dielectric thickness, the control accuracy of back drilling depth, and plasma de-drilling ability are all worthy of in-depth study.

4. Telecom PCB Requirements for Equipment

High-precision equipment and a pre-processing line with less roughening of the copper surface are currently ideal processing equipment; and the testing equipment includes passive intermodulation testers, flying probe impedance testers, loss test equipment, etc.

The industry believes that sophisticated graphics transfer and vacuum etching equipment can monitor and feedback data changes in real-time line width and coupling spacing detection equipment; electroplating equipment with good uniformity, high-precision lamination equipment, etc. can also meet 5G PCB Production needs.

5. Telecom PCB Requirements for Quality Control

Due to the increase of the 5 G signal rate, the board-making deviation has a greater impact on the signal performance, which requires stricter control of the board-making production deviation, and the current mainstream board-making process and equipment are not updated, which will become the future technology development Bottleneck. It is very important for PCB manufacturers to break the situation.

Modern communication systems are mainly realized by means of the transmission mechanism of electromagnetic waves in free space or in guided media.

• Wireless telecom system
• Wired telecom system

When the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave reaches the range of lightwave, such telecom system is specially called

• Optical telecom system

Other telecom systems in the electromagnetic wave range are called

• Electromagnetic systems, or telecom systems
• Cable optical communication system
• The optical fiber communication system

Generally, the guiding medium of the electromagnetic wave is wire, which can be divided into a cable communication system and a clear communication system according to its specific structure.

Radio telecommunication system can be divided into

• Microwave communication system
• shortwave communication system

• Telephone communication system
• Data communication system
• Fax communication system
• Image communication system

As people need much more communication capacity and more and more diversified requirements for communication services, communication systems are rapidly developing towards broadband, and optical fiber communication systems will play an increasingly important role in communication networks.

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