The large-scale commercialization of 5G is imminent, see how the circuit board empowers the PCB industry chain

The large-scale commercialization of 5G is imminent, see how the circuit board empowers the PCB industry chain

With the construction and commercialization of 5G, it is expected that within three years from 2019 to 2021, communications (communication equipment) and automotive electronics are expected to become new kinetic energy driving the development of the PCB industry. In fact, while 5G brings opportunities to the PCB industry, it also puts forward higher and more stringent requirements on technology. Its indicators in terms of speed, integration, heat dissipation, frequency, and multilayer are all higher than 4G. A lot.

      Due to the high-frequency microwave characteristics of 5G, the density of base stations is higher than that of 4G base stations. At the same time, the processing frequency, data transmission and processing speed of various devices are much higher than in the 4G era. These core main equipment, transmission equipment, antenna/radio frequency equipment put forward very high demand for high-frequency and high-speed boards. Mainly reflected in four aspects:

1) The base station radio unit and antenna have undergone major changes in structure and function. The main manifestation is the increase in the number of radio unit channels (8 channels up to 64 channels), corresponding to the increase in PCB area; 4G base station equipment RRU plus antenna unit The structure is changed to 5G AAU structure (integrated RRU and antenna function), corresponding to higher PCB integration.

2) In order to achieve ultra-dense network coverage, in addition to spectrum applications below 6GHz in the 5G spectrum, 28G, 39G and other millimeter wave spectrum resources for hotspot coverage and large-capacity high-speed transmission will be widely used. Therefore, high-frequency microwave base stations The demand for high-frequency PCBs used will increase.

3) Under the network architecture of 5G independent networking, in order to meet the technical requirements of high-speed transmission, the PCB required for data transmission equipment such as baseband unit, network board, backplane, HDI circuit board, high-frequency circuit board, and server will be Use higher-level high-speed copper clad laminate materials.

4) The thermal management of PCB products may become particularly important in the future. Not only are there reasons for adapting to high-frequency devices, there are also heat dissipation requirements brought about by high power and high power density. With the application of new high thermal conductivity materials, the demand for PCB with special heat dissipation structure will appear.