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Design >> RF Design >> 5.9GHz Front-end board - PCB material
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1337794102

Message started by hulk on May 23^rd, 2012, 10:28am

Title: 5.9GHz Front-end board - PCB material
Post by hulk on May 23^rd, 2012, 10:28am

Hi to all,

I am new by here. I am going to develop a board for WLAN 802.11p communications. In my board I am going to use a transceiver (MAX2828), a Power amplifier, a LNA and a RF Switch. All these components are 50ohms I/O matched. So, my RF circuit consists about some RF components and some transmission lines to connect them.

Relatively to the PCB material I don't know if I should use some Rogers or if I could use FR4. I know Rogers is more suitable for high-frequency applications, but it is much more expensive.

As my board won’t have any matching network with lines, there will be only some short transmission lines to connection, so low insertion loss is expected, even with FR4.

Considering the cost-performance trade-off for this situation I think FR4 is a good choice.

What do you think about this?

Thanks a lot

Title: Re: 5.9GHz Front-end board - PCB material
Post by loose-electron on May 24^th, 2012, 12:39pm

FR4 whenever possible.
Specialty material only if unavoidable due to cost and ease of availability.

You should be fine if you include the capacitive loading of the board in your design.