Chad Morgan, Engineer, Circuits and Design Electrical Development Group, Tyco Electronics

One area of the physical layer that has received significant attention is signal degradation due to high-density board-to-board connector footprints. One way to improve system performance may be to transition from traditional through-hole technology to surface-mount technology. Such a transition, however, introduces new manufacturing, cost, and assembly concerns and should be considered only when system performance improvement is necessary.

Studies to date have mainly focused on impedance and noise improvements of stand-alone footprints. This paper quantifies the impact of surface-mount technology on system performance. The paper then focuses on outlining manufacturing concerns associated with surface-mount technology.