What is the RF connector?

RF coaxial connector is a component installed in a cable or instrument, and is used to electrically connect or separate electronic devices of the transmission line. It is a series of mechatronics. There are many varieties and specifications, relying on the mechanical structure to ensure the electrical characteristics, which is essentially different from other low-frequency connectors. Most of the RF coaxial connector parts are processed by turning machines, and the assembly is mostly manual. Product updates are slow. From the structural principle, the connector has three main parts, the contact pair, the insulator, and the shell.

A radio frequency connector is often thought of as a component that is attached to a cable or installed on an instrument as a component for electrical connection or separation of transmission lines. It belongs to mechatronics products. Simply speaking, it mainly serves as a bridge.

There are many varieties and specifications of RF connectors, including more than 20 international general series, and more varieties and specifications. They rely on mechanical structure to ensure electrical characteristics. They are mechatronics products and are essentially different from other low-frequency connectors. SMA connector is the most common type of connector. The processing of RF coaxial connector parts is mainly turning machine processing, and there are many manual assembly operations, which are difficult to carry out automatic assembly, and product upgrades are slow.

RF connector is an important part of the device, which is a labor-intensive product with a certain technical content. Reliability, failure modes and failure mechanisms are complex.

The connector is generally a connection between a pin contact and a hole contact. We know that the pins or terminals of components generally have a layer of plating, such as lead-tin alloy plating, pure tin plating, nickel plating, silver plating, silver-palladium alloy plating, gold plating, and so on. So the contact between components is actually the contact between these plated metals. Of course, the conductivity of different plating metals is different, and the corresponding contact resistance is also different. Generally, the conductivity of gold is better, followed by silver. In the welding process, since welding is actually a process of forming an alloy, the alloy itself is a good conductor, so the reliability of the welding itself is relatively high, unless it is poor welding. However, the connection between the connectors relies on the contact between the surfaces, so it is easy to cause poor contact. More specific reasons are as follows.

Whether the contact between two metal surfaces is good or not depends mainly on the material (different metals have different conductivity), contact pressure, and actual contact surface junction. Regarding the types of materials, as mentioned above, the plating materials of general devices are basically made of good conductors, which have little effect on poor contact, and at most affect contact resistance (of course, it also affects whether it is easy to be oxidized. ), so I won’t discuss it in more detail. Regarding the contact pressure of the connector, the connector relies on the elastic force of the hole contact to give a certain pressure to the needle contact. Generally, the greater the pressure, the better the contact. Of course, generally small and thin hole contacts are unlikely to provide excessive pressure. And if the elasticity of the hole contact is not good, the pressure will be small and the contact will not be so good. At the same time, if the hole contact piece or the needle contact piece is deformed, the actual contact area will be small, which may lead to poor contact. At the same time, the hole contact piece or the pin contact piece of the connector is of course generally connected to the plastic. If the number of pins is too large, it may cause the position of one or several contacts to be installed on the plastic part to be deviated. Therefore, two When a connector is inserted, the misaligned contacts may not make good contact.

ZOMWAVE focuses on the design, development and manufacturing of RF interconnection solutions, including RF test probes/BTB probes, RF VNA test cables, RF adapters, RF attenuators, RF terminal loads, RF power splitters, RF switches and microwaves & Low loss & phase compensation cable assemblies and RF coaxial connectors (1.85mm (67GHz), 2.4mm, 2.92mm, 3.5mm, 1.0/2.3, SMA, BNC, BMA, N Type, HN, TNC, SMP, SMPM , MCX, MMCX, SSMCX, etc. are used for plug/male and jack/female, etc.). The R&D and engineering team has more than 20 years of RF experience in ZTC Technology, and has detailed and in-depth research on materials, applications and manufacturing processes. We provide a wide range of interconnection solutions for RF testing applications, including 2G/3G/4G(LTE)/5G (Sub-6G and microwave) and mobile phone RF testing in WIFI and Bluetooth. We also provide RF connectivity solutions for the telecommunications, healthcare, automotive, military and aerospace industries. If you have any needs, please feel free to contact us!