Leoben : Efforts are being taken to develop solutions for car-to-car communication and autonomous driving in the automotive industry. With the communication network moving to 5G, networks are achieving higher speeds. The need of the hour is to transfer large volumes of data in a short span of time. This task needs to be carried out securely. Such applications need specially developed PCB and connection technologies to be implemented. Apart from providing interconnection facilities, they provide antennas and filters. The global leader in this technology is AT&S, having developed PCB giving performance in the range of GHz.
It is predicted that there would be a steep growth of High-frequency laminates in the days to come. This need would be majorly generated by – radar applications and base stations. Processes and materials which are suited for this purpose have been evaluated by AT&S with a view to reduce performance losses. There is a diverse set of parameters which will cause these(RF) signals to reflect from the PCB, mostly due to variation in the impedance of the signal. Vital factors pertaining to this include – layer and structure of the material in use. The conductor path (trace) geometry does play an active role in the same.
Loss factor(Df) should be < 1 and dielectric constant below 3.0 to obtain frequencies till 90 GHz. FR4 has values in the range which are around 4 and 0.015. For this we require materials such as polyamide, resin mixes, PTFE or LCP. Thin copper foils which have less roughness can be used to reduce the losses during manufacturing process. For frequencies higher than 80 GHz the company uses a PTFE structure which is homogeneous.
Radar systems and driver assistance systems ( with the need of 77GHz and 60GHz) have been implemented based on RF technologies from AT&S. Deeper positioning of electronic components can be achieved using the 2.5D technology. This makes use of the cavities which are defined leading to a thinner structure. Another approach to achieve the same is the combination of RF design with embedded components.