Abstract:
A connector is provided that includes a first housing that supports first terminal bricks. The first housing can mate with a second housing that supports second terminal bricks that are configured to make with the first terminal bricks. The first housing and first terminal bricks can be adjusted so that a variety of spacing requirements can be met by the combination of the first and second housings while allowing for reduced tooling investment.

Description:
RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is a national phase of PCT Application No. PCT/US12/29471, filed Mar. 16, 2012, which in turn claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/453,847, filed Mar. 17, 2011, and which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention relates to field of connectors, more specifically to connectors suitable to support high-data rate applications. 
     DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART 
     Electrical connectors come in a variety of configurations and generally configured to provide a right-angle or a vertical orientation with respect to the circuit board on which they are mounted. When two circuit boards are provided in a parallel orientation and two appropriately configured connectors are designed to allow the two circuit boards to be mated together with a vertical movement, the connectors are sometimes referred to as a mezzanine style connectors. While a number of mezzanine style connectors exist, one issue that continues to be problematic for such designs is the desire for increased density (e.g., a desire to increase the number of pins per square inch). It is often challenging to provide a dense connector that also performs well at higher frequencies because details that can be safely ignored at 1 GHz, for example, can become significant barriers as the frequency increases beyond 10 GHz. Consequentially, certain individuals would appreciate further improvements in mezzanine style connectors. 
     BRIEF SUMMARY 
     A housing is provided with a mating face and a mount face. Channels extend between the two faces. Terminal bricks are inserted in the channels in a first direction and each terminal brick can include a ground terminal and a pair of signal terminals. In an embodiment, the signal terminals can be provided in a pod that is mounted by translating the pod in a second direction so that the pod engages the ground terminal, which may be U-shaped. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The present invention is illustrated by way of example and not limited in the accompanying figures in which like reference numerals indicate similar elements and in which: 
         FIG. 1  illustrates a perspective view of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 2  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 3  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 4  illustrates a perspective view of another cross-section of the connector system depicted in  FIG. 3 . 
         FIG. 5  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 6  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 7  illustrates a partially exploded perspective view of an embodiment of a connector system. 
         FIG. 8  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector. 
         FIG. 9  illustrates an enlarged view of the embodiment depicted in  FIG. 8 . 
         FIG. 10  illustrates a partially exploded perspective view of the embodiment depicted in  FIG. 8 . 
         FIG. 11  illustrates a perspective view of an embodiment of a terminal brick. 
         FIG. 12  illustrates another perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 13  illustrates an elevated side view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 14  illustrates a bottom plan view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 15  illustrates a plan view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 16  illustrates another perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 17  illustrates another perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 11 . 
         FIG. 18  illustrates a partially exploded perspective view of an embodiment of a terminal brick. 
         FIG. 19  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector. 
         FIG. 20  illustrates an enlarged perspective view of the embodiment depicted in  FIG. 19 . 
         FIG. 21  illustrates a partially exploded perspective view of an embodiment of a connector. 
         FIG. 22  illustrates a perspective view of an embodiment of a terminal brick. 
         FIG. 23  illustrates a plan view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 22 . 
         FIG. 24  illustrates another perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 22 . 
         FIG. 25  illustrates another perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 22 . 
         FIG. 26  illustrates a partially exploded perspective view of the terminal brick depicted in  FIG. 22 . 
         FIG. 27  illustrates a perspective view of a cross-section of an embodiment of a connector. 
         FIG. 28  illustrates a perspective view of an embodiment of a connector housing. 
         FIG. 29  illustrates another perspective view of a cross-section of the connector housing depicted in  FIG. 28 . 
         FIG. 30  illustrates a perspective view of a mated pair of terminal bricks. 
         FIG. 31  illustrates an enlarged elevated side view of a cross-section of a pair of mated terminal bricks. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     The detailed description that follows describes exemplary embodiments and is not intended to be limited to the expressly disclosed combination(s). Therefore, unless otherwise noted, features disclosed herein may be combined together to form additional combinations that were not otherwise shown for purposes of brevity. 
     Applicants have determined that one issue with existing design is the problem with making mezzanine connectors of different heights. Different applications may require different spacing between connected circuit boards. For example,  FIG. 1  illustrates a connector system  10  that includes a first connector  100  that mates to a second connector  300  to provide a mezzanine-style board to board connection. As can be appreciated, different applications might have different spacing requirements and might also have different requirements for the number of terminals supported by the connectors (and/or various footprints such as rectangular and square). In the past this tended to require a large amount of expensive tooling to address all the different dimensional requirements. 
     Applicants have determined that one solution to this issue is to provide a housing  110  with a first section  120  and a second section  130  that are formed as two pieces and then joined together. As the first section  120  has a first floor  121  with a plurality of aperture  122  in a floor  121  that can each received a terminal brick  150  and the second section  130  has a second floor  131  with apertures  132  that can each receive the terminal brick  150 , the two floors  121 ,  131  can support the terminal bricks  150  in the desired position and orientation. Thus, it is possible to adjust a length  168  of the terminal brick  150  and to adjust a height  128  of a wall  126  of the first section  120  so as to provide a housing  110  with a desired distance between a mounting face  110   a  and a mating face  110   b . It should be noted, however, that while a two housing structure is believed to provide a lower cost design it is not required to take advantage of other features disclosed herein. 
     As can be appreciated, the apertures  122 ,  132  together help form a channel  105  that extends through the housing  110  and in an embodiment (such as depicted in  FIG. 2 ) the channel  105  can extend in a substantially straight direction between an mounting surface of a first housings  110  to a mounting surface  310   a  of a second housing  310  when the first housing  110  and the second housing  310  are mated together. 
     One significant benefit of the depicted design is that the performance of the terminal brick  150  can be predetermined based on the structure of the terminal brick  150 . As depicted, the terminal brick  150  comprises a pod  152  and a ground terminal  160 . The pod  152  includes a frame  155  formed around a pair of signal terminals  170  and the terminal brick  150  provides a communication channel with the ground terminal  160  forming a imaginary line  401  that essentially isolates a differential pair  180  formed by the signal terminals  170  (as can be appreciated by  FIG. 27 ). Thus, in an array of terminals, a victim terminal brick V can provide good electrical separation for the signal terminals S 1 , S 2  from the surrounding signal terminals. 
     The terminals (both the signal terminals and the ground terminal) can include a solder mass  163  provided on tails  162 ,  172  that is configured to be used to solder the terminals to a corresponding pad on a circuit board. Alternatively, the tails could be configured for press-fit mating to a circuit board. One advantage of the solder attach construction is that the supporting circuit board will not have to include vias, thus the route-out configuration of the circuit board may be simplified. 
     The ground terminal  160  includes a contact  161  that has an engagement angle □ 2  while the signal terminals each have a contact  171  that has an engagement angle □ 1 . The two engagement angles can be substantially opposite and as can be appreciated, one benefit of the depicted design is that the terminal brick  150  can readily engage mating contacts without stubbing. This provides the benefit of providing a configuration where the terminals don&#39;t just engage mating contacts on the same side but instead provide for a configuration where the forces exerted during the mating process can be substantially balanced. Thus, the depicted embodiment potentially reduces the stress placed on the housing  120 ,  130  during a mating with an opposing connector. This can help reduce the stress on the tails and may provide greater assurance that the connector stays reliably mounted on a circuit board. 
     As depicted, the ground terminal  160  includes two tails that are aligned with the tails  172  of the signal terminals. Typically the mating and/or mounting interface of a connector changes the impedance of the terminals due to the change in structure that is necessary at the interface. By have two tails  162  of the ground terminal  160  aligned with the signal terminals and extending to the supporting circuit board, the impedance of the differential terminals can be kept closer to the desired value (which may change depending on the application) over their entire length. This design, as can be appreciated, thus helps provide consistent impedance all the way to the board (and helps provides less of a change in the impedance in the mounting interface) and also helps shield the signal terminals from the signal terminals of adjacent terminal bricks. 
     In an embodiment, the frame  155  includes blocks that are spaced apart and provide additional structure to support the signal terminals  170 . To improve performance, the signal terminals  170  can include displaced portions  175  that are aligned with each other but offset from the ground terminal  160 . While the width of the terminal is maintained in the displaced portion, a neck-down portion  176   a ,  176   b  decreases the amount of metal used to provide the signal terminal. A bent portion  180  provides the contacts  171  that engage mating terminals on a mating connector. As can be appreciated, because the contacts  171  of the signal terminals  170  are bent toward the contacts  161  of the ground terminal it has been determined to be undesirable to have two contacts on the ground terminal side. Instead, the contact  161  and signal contacts  171  are angled so as to transition toward a more in-line relationship (which may or may not be fully in line) and thus can provide what is substantially a signal/ground/signal orientation before transitioning back to a edge-coupled signal-signal pair at least partially enclosed in a U-shaped ground terminal (as is provided by the terminal brick  150 / 350 ). 
     As can be appreciated from  FIG. 18 , the frame  155  can include one or more windows  158  that are aligned with the signal terminals. As can be appreciated, this has a tendency to lower the dielectric constant associated with the signal terminals and be used to tune the signal terminals so that the electrical length of the signal terminals and the ground terminals is substantially uniform while helping to provide a consistent impedance through the length of the terminal brick. It should be noted that two windows are disclosed but a single window or a greater number of windows could also be used (it being understood that using one window might reduce the strength of the terminal brick while using multiple windows might increase the associated dielectric constant). 
     As can be appreciated, the terminal brick  150  is inserted in a first direction D 1  into a corresponding channel provided by the housing  110 . The pod  152 , however, is mated with the U-shaped ground terminal  160  by translation in a second direction D 2  which is substantially perpendicular to the first direction D 1 . This helps insure the pod  152  is less likely to be dislodged from the ground terminal  160  during installation of the terminal brick  150  into the housing  110 . The pod can include multiple fingers  156  that have a snap-fit with a corresponding aperture  164  in the ground terminal  160 . 
     The connector  100  mates with the connector  300  and connector  300  includes a housing  310  that supports terminal bricks  350  and includes a mounting face  310   a  and a mating face  310   b . In should be noted the features of the mating face  110   b  and  310   b  have a polarity that could be reversed if desired (e.g., the connector  110  could have a lip that extends around it perimeter and is configured to receive connector  310 ). The housing  310  includes posts  315  that extend from a floor  320  and the posts define channels that support the terminal bricks  350 . 
     The terminal brick  350  includes a pod  352  that supports signal terminals  370  with a frame  355 . The pod  352  can be mounted on a ground terminal  360  by translating the pod  352  (which can be accomplished by relative movement of the pod  352  and the ground terminal  360 ) in a fourth direction D 4 . Then the resultant terminal brick  350  can then be inserted in to the housing  310  by translation in a third direction D 3 , where direction D 3  and D 4  can be substantially perpendicular to each other. 
     It should be noted that the terminal brick  350  can have a similar construction to terminal brick  150  (discussed above). For example, the signal terminals  370  each include a contact  371  and a tail  372  that can support a solder mass  378 . The ground terminal  360  includes a base  366  with sides  367  that, in combination form a U-shaped channel. The ground terminal  360  further includes a contact  361  and two tails  362  that can each support a solder mass  368 . 
     It should be noted that the contacts  371  are supported by arms that have opposing edges  376   a / 376   b  and the spacing between the edges  376   a / 376   b  can be adjusted to control differential impedance in the mating interface. Thus, a communication channel can be provided that includes a terminal brick  150  coupled to a terminal brick  350 . The length of one of the terminal bricks (and the respective housing) can be adjusted distinct from the other so as to provide for a connector system that can support a number of different spacing requirements with a minimal number of designs. 
     As can be appreciated from  FIG. 31 , the contacts  371  and contact  361  are configured to deflect in the opposite direction when mating to the contacts  161 ,  171 . This helps reduce stresses on the terminal brick and the resultant housing when the connector  300  mates with the connector  100  and can also help reduce the forces exerted on the solder joints of the terminals. 
     The disclosure provided herein describes features in terms of preferred and exemplary embodiments thereof. Numerous other embodiments, modifications and variations within the scope and spirit of the appended claims will occur to persons of ordinary skill in the art from a review of this disclosure.