Patent ID: 7798852

Claim:
A mezzanine connector, comprising: a shroud having a front mating face and an open rear face, the housing including a plurality of terminal-receiving passages, the passages being arranged in columns and rows; at least one connector unit received in the shroud, the at least one connector unit including a support frame supporting a linear array of conductive terminals, the array including a first and second row of the terminals, said rows of terminals being spaced apart the support frame including a base frame member extending proximate to a mounting face of the at least one connector unit and a vertical front spoke spaced apart from the base frame member and extending proximate to a mating face of the at least one connector unit; the terminals each including tail portion for mounting to a circuit board, a contact portion for mating with an opposing connector and body portion interconnecting the tail portion and contact portion together, the terminals including pairs of signal terminals and ground terminals, the pairs of signal terminals being aligned edge-to-edge as differential signal terminal pairs within their terminal body portions and within each of first and second row, the differential signal terminal pairs being separated from each other within each of the first and second row by one of the ground terminals, each ground terminal in the first row being spaced apart from and facing a differential signal terminal pair in the second row, and each ground terminal in the second row being spaced apart from and facing a differential signal terminal pair in said the first row, each of the ground terminals having a first width the is greater than a second width of the differential signal terminal pair, the second width corresponding to an outside edge to edge width of the differential signal terminal pair, the ground terminals extending within the connector unit from the base frame member to the vertical front spoke so that the ground terminals cooperatively act electrically as a single ground shield in a serpentine pattern within the first and second row of terminals; the support frame further being formed in two halves, each of the first and second row of terminals being supported by one of the two halves, the support frame halves spacing the first and second row of terminals apart from each other, widthwise, within the at least one connector unit.