Embedded passive technology for networking systems

Particularly during the past ten years, the mobile communications industry has grown by orders of magnitude, fueled by digital and RF circuit fabrication improvements, new large scale circuit integration, and other miniaturization technologies that make portable equipment smaller, cheaper, and more reliable. A key area within the telecommunication industry covers base stations and switch systems. Communications providers now require systems that provide significantly increased switching capacity. Combining both increased capability with size reduction is resulting in smaller printed circuit boards (PCBs) with more components placed on them. A potential solution to this is to embed some of the components within the board. The components which would be suitable for such a transition would be passives such as resistors, capacitors and inductors. This paper describes the work done in designing and manufacturing a PCB for the telecommunications industry with embedded resistors and microvias.