5G is coming, and PCB, the mother of electronIC products, is facing new challenges

PCB manufacturers, PCB designers and PCBA manufacturers explain that 5G is coming, and PCB, the mother of electronic products, is facing new challenges

The commercial use of 5G brings unlimited MARKet opportunities to upstream and downstream industries. As a key interconnect for assembling electronIC parts, how will PCB (printed circuit board) share in the 5G market? Is 5G's technical requirements for PCB unattainable? Can domestic PCB enterprises take the opportunity of 5G to overtake at corners?

PCB is calLED the "mother of electronic products". It not only provides electrical connection for electronIC components, but also carries the business functions of digital and analog signal transmission, power supply, RF microwave signal transmission and reception of electronic equipment. Most electronic equipment and products require PCB.

It is understood that every RMB 1 PCB can support the development of RMB 30 terminal products. The 5G era has provided a huge market and opportunity for the PCB industry. It is estimated that the direct output economic benefits of 5G in 2020, 2025 and 2030 will be 484 billion yuan, 3.3 trillion yuan and 6.3 trillion yuan respectively, and the indirect output economic benefits will be 1.2 trillion yuan, 6.3 trillion yuan and 10.6 trillion yuan respectively.

5G puts forward a lot of demands on PCB from communication network construction, terminals, and derivative application scenarios. Due to the high frequency microwave characteristics of 5G, the density of base stations is higher than that of 4G. At the same time, the processing frequency, data transmission and processing speed of various devices are far higher than those in the 4G era. These core main equipment, transmission equipment, antenna/RF equipment have a very high demand for high-frequency high-speed boards, and the unit price is higher than the PCB of 4G base stations. It is estimated that in a single base station, 5G base stations require twice as many PCBs as 4G base stations. In addition, 5G terminal devices, such as mobile phones and SMArt watches, also need to be updated with the communication technology. The PCB demand of this part is much greater than that of the infrastructure part.

It is predicted that the total value of 4G Acer Station PCB is about 5492 yuan. The market space of PCB for 4G base stations in the world is about 5 billion yuan/year~9 billion yuan/year, and the corresponding CCL (copper foil substrate) is about 1 billion yuan/year~2 billion yuan/year. The value of 5G macro base station PCB is about 15104 yuan/station. In peak years, the PCB demand brought by 5G base station construction is about 21 billion yuan/year~24 billion yuan/year, corresponding to the CCL market space of about 8 billion yuan.

While bringing opportunities to PCB industry, 5G also puts forward higher and more stringent requirements for technology. Its indicators in terms of speed, integration, heat dissipation, frequency and multi-layer are much higher than 4G.

Yang Zhicheng told China Electronics News that full spectrum intervention, massive MIMO and ultra dense network will be the core technologies to realize 5G network. Accordingly, technical challenges are also presented to PCB. First of all, the structure and function of the RF unit and antenna of the base station have changed greatly, mainly as the number of channels of the RF unit increases (from 8 channels to 64 channels), and the corresponding PCB area increases; The structure of 4G base station equipment RRU and antenna unit is changed to 5G AAU structure (integrating RRU and antenna functions), and the corresponding PCB integration is higher. Secondly, in order to achieve ultra dense network coverage, in addition to the spectrum application below 6GHz in the 5G spectrum, the 28G, 39G and other millimeter wave spectrum resources used for hot spot coverage and high-capacity high-speed transmission will be widely used. Therefore, the demand for high-frequency PCB used by high-frequency microwave base stations will increase. Finally, under the 5G independent networking network architecture, in order to meet the technical requirements of high-speed transmission, the PCBs required by baseband units, network boards, backplanes, servers and other data transmission equipment will use higher level high-speed copper clad laminate materials. "These technical challenges require domestic PCB enterprises to keep abreast of technology and market trends and take a differentiated path to build unique competitiveness." Yang Zhicheng said.

In addition, the thermal management of PCB products may be particularly important in the future. "There are not only reasons to adapt to high-frequency devices, but also the heat dissipation requirements brought by high power and high power density. With the application of new high thermal conductivity materials, special heat dissipation structural PCB needs will emerge. "The servers needed for big data, cloud computing, etc. are multilayer boards with high layer count and high reliability; in new technology fields such as the Internet of Things, intelligent manufacturing, and automatic driving, there will be some PCB needs with special structures and special technical requirements, which may require special materials, but they may also be special structures different from traditional PCBs, or PCBs with manufacturing accuracy requirements far beyond the general level."

Deeply understand customer needs and take the road of differentiation

With the rapid development of the electronic information industry, the PCB industry continues to maintain a growth trend, and the global PCB output increased from more than 40 billion dollars in 2008 to 60 billion dollars in 2018. The share of China's PCB industry in the world has also changed dramatically, from less than 10% in 2000 to 30% in 2018, and more than 50% in 2018.

Yang Zhicheng told China Electronics News that in the past 10 years, the focus of PCB industry has been shifting to Asia, and China has become the largest PCB industry base in the world. "DeSPIte this, there is still a certain gap between domestic PCB enterprises and foreign companies in terms of technical level, especially high-end PCB products. 5G is a rare opportunity. Seizing this opportunity, domestic PCB enterprises can catch up with and surpass international manufacturers in terms of scale, technology, management, etc." Zhai Dingshi told reporters.

On January 2 this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology formulated the Standard Conditions for the Printed circuit board industry and the Interim Measures for the Administration of printed circuit board Industry Standard Announcements, which mentioned that PCB enterprises should be encouraged to strengthen top-level design, promote the upgrading of automation equipment, promote the improvement of automation level, and integrate automation, informatization and intelligence into all aspects of design, production, management and service; Encourage enterprises to actively carry out intelligent manufacturing, reduce operating costs, shorten product production cycle and improve production efficiency. In the 5G era, PCB enterprises should especially keep pace with the times. "Improve internal skills in R&D, production and management, increase research and investment in product technology, and constantly meet new requirements of customers and products." Yang Zhicheng said.

Unlike the OEM of standard products, PCB is a customized product serving downstream customers. It is a highly "customized" product. We should have a deeper understanding of customer needs. Zhai Dingshi said that 5G is a technology that develops and innovates all the time. If it can't keep up with the needs of customers and conduct more thorough and detailed research on products with customers, it is difficult to make progress with the market. He also stressed that technical communication with raw material enterprises should be strengthened. Many products in the 5G era have high requirements for raw materials and production processes. Only if a good raw material supply system can be established in China, can we steadily and rapidly make greater and stronger in the 5G PCB field. PCB Research Institute of printed circuit Board Development Co., Ltd. said that enterprises that make printed circuit boards for communication equipment need to study the application of high-speed materials, signal integrity and signal SIMulation. At the same time, high-speed material process research and corresponding equipment upgrading are required to meet the requirements of improving the processing accuracy of circuit boards.