Pluggable module with coaxial connector interface

Abstract

A pluggable module comprising a housing having a first end and second end, an edge connector disposed at the first end, an F-type coaxial connector at the second end and a release lever including a stamped body that is symmetrical about a centerline bisecting the length of the body.

Claims

1. A pluggable module comprising: a housing having a first end and an opposite second end; an edge connector disposed at the first end; an threaded F-type coaxial connector at the second end, the threaded F-type coaxial connector electrically connected to the edge connector, the edge connector for pluggably mating the first end of the housing within a host receptacle; and the pluggable module including a G.hn wireline physical layer for improving broadband performance bridging to an Ethernet interface to the first end having the edge connector compliant with Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) specifications.

2. The pluggable module of claim 1 comprising a miniature balun disposed within the module and electrically connected between the threaded F-type coaxial connector and the edge connector, the miniature balun for converting between a single-ended input to a differential signal processing circuit.

3. The pluggable module of claim 2 wherein the miniature balun performs a 75 Ohm single ended to 100 Ohm differential conversion.

4. The pluggable module of claim 2 wherein the miniature balun provides at least one of the following elements: a) surface mount leads; b) ferrite core of high magnetic permeability; c) an overall height of the miniature balun package being restricted for use within the envelope dimensions provided by SFP specification.

5. The pluggable module of claim 2 wherein the module is miniaturized by providing a printed circuit board (PCB) having components on both sides of the PCB and the miniature balun having surface mount leads for mounting to pads on a first side of the PCB and facilitating mounting of other components on a second side of the PCB.

6. The pluggable module of claim 1 wherein the housing includes a release lever having a body that is at least in part metallic.

7. The pluggable module of claim 6 comprising a release mechanism having a stamped body disposed on the module.

8. The pluggable module of claim 7 wherein the release mechanism type is one of a) a release lever; b) a push button; and c) a pull tab.

9. The pluggable module of claim 1 wherein the housing is cast from one of aluminum, aluminum alloy, zinc and zinc alloy.

10. The pluggable module of claim 1 further comprising a Gfast wireline physical layer in electrical connection to the edge connector for improving broadband performance.

11. The pluggable module of claim 1 further comprising a VDSL/VDSL2 wireline physical layer in electrical connection to the edge connector for improving broadband performance.

12. A pluggable module comprising: a housing having a first end and an opposite second end; an edge connector disposed at the first end of the housing, the edge connector compliant with a Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) specification; a threaded F-type coaxial connector at the second end, the threaded F-type coaxial connector electrically connected to the edge connector; and a release mechanism for releasing the module including the first end and the edge connector from a host receptacle, the pluggable module having a G.hn wireline physical layer.

13. The pluggable module of claim 12 wherein the module includes a release mechanism having a body that is at least in part metallic.

14. The pluggable module of claim 13 wherein the release mechanism type is one of a) a release lever; b) a push button; and c) a pull tab.

15. The pluggable module of claim 12 further comprising a miniature balun disposed within the module and electrically connected between the F-type coaxial connector and the edge connector for converting between a single-ended input to a differential load.

16. A method of assembling a pluggable module comprising the steps of: obtaining a miniature balun having a ferrite core having high magnetic permeability; mounting the miniature balun to a first side of a printed circuit board (PCB) via a surface mount process; mounting other components to a second side of the PCB, the PCB electrically connecting components mounted thereon; casting a housing from an alloy, the housing having a threaded F-type connector and a release mechanism attached to the housing providing an edge connector that is compliant with a Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) specification and the edge connector electrically linked to the PCB and the miniature balun, the edge connector mounted within the housing.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the housing is compliant with the current SFP specification.

18. The method of claim 16 further comprising the steps of providing the PCB within the housing and having an edge of the PCB protruding from the housing to form a portion of the edge connector.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein the F-type threaded connector is attached to the housing at a second end, opposite the first end having the edge connector.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

(1) FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a module of the present invention;

(2) FIG. 2 is an exploded view of the module of FIG. 1;

(3) FIG. 3 is perspective view of an alternate embodiment of a module of the present invention;

(4) FIG. 4-5 is an exploded perspective view of the module of FIG. 3;

(5) FIG. 6 is a block diagram of the electronics of the module;

(6) FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a balun of the module of the present invention;

(7) FIG. 8 is a side elevation cut-away view taken at line 8-8 from FIG. 1 depicting the push button in a first position;

(8) FIG. 9 is a side elevation cut-away view taken at line 8-8 from FIG. 1 depicting the push button in a second position;

(9) FIG. 10 is a plan view of a release lever sheet prior to final forming;

(10) FIG. 11 is a bottom view of the forming process of the release lever sheet of the present invention;

(11) FIG. 12 is side elevation exploded view of the module of FIG. 1;

(12) FIG. 13a is a plan view of the release lever sheet in a flattened state prior to forming;

(13) FIG. 13b is a side elevation view of the sheet of FIG. 13a, after forming;

(14) FIG. 13c is a perspective view of the release lever of FIG. 13b;

(15) FIG. 14 is a side elevation view of a printed circuit board (PCB) of the present invention; and

(16) FIG. 15 is a perspective view of the bottom of the PCB of FIG. 14.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

(17) Embodiments of the Coaxial Module invention are depicted in FIGS. 1-15. In particular, a module having an edge connector at the first end that is compliant with SFP standard SFF-8431 SFP+ specification. The module may have connectors, latching mechanisms and other components, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,181,173; 8,040,687 and 8,335,088 that are incorporated herein by reference. The second end of the module includes an F-Type coaxial connector as shown in FIGS. 1-5. Such a module is pluggable into a receptacle of a host device, for example, Customer Premise Equipment.

(18) Turning to FIG. 1 the pluggable module 100 is depicted in an embodiment having a housing top 111, a housing side 112 and a disengager button 113. In an embodiment the housing is compliant SFP and SFP+ specifications, so that front body housing 115 may be inserted into a cage of a host device (not shown) and electric connection is accomplished by an edge connector 132 mating with a corresponding connector on the mother board of the host device (not shown). In an embodiment, the host device may be a router, switcher, hub, blade, cable box, distribution point unit or other data or telecom equipment.

(19) Turning to FIG. 2 a flange 116 is provided in combination with nut 117 to secure an F-Type coaxial connector to a printed circuit board (PCB) 130. The flange 116 is stamped and formed with a resilient clip 126 that provides a compression contact against a solder pad of PCB 130. The pad, in an embodiment is connected to ground so that the flange 116 is grounded to facilitate Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) shielding for the module 100. In an embodiment the module 100 includes a release lever 119 120. In first embodiment, the release lever (FIGS. 1 and 2) is a push style lever that allows a user to push button 1 13 in order to cause the module 100 to “pop” out of the host device a first distance from the host face plate (not shown). Once the module 100 is ejected to the first distance, there is room for the user to grab the sides of the module top and bottom housing halves 101, 102 with his/her fingers in order to remove the module 100 the remaining distance, so that the entire module may be removed from a cage of a host device (in order to repair the module 100 or to upgrade of downgrade the host device with a new module having alternate functionality (e.g. copper to fiber)). Further description of the release lever 119 is provided with respect to FIGS. 8-14 below.

(20) FIG. 2 also depicts EMI collar 122 to be clipped onto housing 1 01 of the module 100 within recess 129 (FIG. 5). The collar 122 includes fingers for engaging a face plate of a host device to ground the collar 122 to the host (not shown). In an embodiment the housing half 101, and bottom housing half 102 are metallic, such as zinc alloy, zinc, aluminum or aluminum alloy, so that the collar 122 may ground to the housing top and bottom housing halves 101 102 to provide EMI shielding for the module 100. A fastener 124 attaches the top half of the housing 101 to the bottom housing half 102 with the PCB 130 disposed between.

(21) Turning to FIG. 3, an alternative release lever 120 is depicted. In an embodiment, the lever provides a pivoting motion about axle 123 when a user grabs lever arm(s) 121 and pulls downward (from the position depicted in FIGS. 3 and 5) to activate release latch 127 so that the module is released from the host and the user, by continuing to rotate the lever arms 121 causes the arms to pivot around base bar 125 and axle 123, so that the release lever 120 moves to a second/horizontal orientation and continued pulling by the user will allow for complete removal of the module first end 105 (opposite the second end) from the host.

(22) As depicted in FIG. 5, the lower housing side 112 may have pivoting release lever 120, and also release lever 119 to accommodate rapid conversion of the module 100 from one version of the release lever to the next.

(23) FIG. 6 depicts an electronic diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. The module PCB 130 has circuitry and components including input via F-type connector 201, a gas discharge tube (GDT) 202, a surge protection device (SPD) 203, a low pass filter (LPF) 204, and a balun chip 206 having a package including at least one surface mount lead 205. Chipsets are also provided on the PCB 130 for an analog front end (AFE) 207, a digital signal processor (DSP) for providing a PHYSICAL (PHY) layer device 208, a 20 pin connector 209 compliant with an SFP or SFP+ specification (e.g. and edge connector), a memory device 210, such a FLASH chip, a serial 1D EEPROM 211 and a power supply 212 (e.g. battery or DC supply).

(24) A more detailed description of the above components 201-212 follows. Coaxial input connector 201 such as an F-Type connector is preferred for telecommunications carriers with RG-59, 75Q coaxial cable assets but other connector types can be adapted to the invention. A coupling capacitor C1, serves as a DC-block to eliminate DC-bias oftentimes present on a coaxial cable used to feed a remote low noise amplifier (LNA) or low noise block (LNB), from entering the electronics contained within the pluggable module. Nonetheless, the implementation can be adapted to incorporate a power splitter in place of coupling capacitor C1 for those situations where a DC voltage is present on the coaxial cable for the purpose of remotely powering the host device that the module is plugged into.

(25) Gas Discharge Tube (GDT) 202 is a component designed to dissipate the energy associated with a high over-voltage transient and is applied in the invention to protect against over voltage associated with a lightning strike event. The technology associated with GDT 202 has evolved sufficiently that today it is possible to incorporate one as the basis for lightning over-voltage protection in a device as compact as an SFP module. This is vital for the invention which can be connected to telecommunications carrier copper infrastructure that extends outdoors where it is vulnerable to lightning strike events.

(26) Surge protection device (SPD) 203 has an arrangement of a type Zener diode designed with a fast transient response time used to limit over-voltage surges most typically associated with lightning strike events. The SPD 203 is implemented in conjunction with a GDT 202 to deliver the over-voltage protection required by telecommunications carriers for any equipment connected to their copper cable infrastructure.

(27) Low Pass Filter (LPF) 204 is a collection of passive elements, capacitors, inductors and resistors, arranged to filter high frequency noise that might otherwise prove troublesome to the proper function of the invention. The LPF 204 can optionally be implemented to mitigate the influence and associated cross-talk resulting from other signals co-existing on the coaxial cable such as cable television (CATV) signals.

(28) Balun (balanced unbalanced transformer) 206 is an electrical device that converts between a balanced signal (two signals working against each other where ground is irrelevant) and an unbalanced signal (a single signal working against ground or pseudoground). A balun can take many forms and may include devices that also transform impedances. The balun 206 may also provide a transformer component for converting between a single-ended, or unbalanced, input to a differential, or balanced, load. In one embodiment, the balun serves to transform between single-ended 75Q coaxial cable and a 100Q differential interface to-from the analog front-end (AFE). The invention improves on this approach by integrating a Gfast or G.now/G.hn balun into a pluggable module along with a native F-Type interface as well as the rest of the circuitry needed to implement an entire Gfast or G.now/G.hn physical layer connection. The balun used in the invention is miniaturized by omitting the over-molding typical and usual for a standalone, external balun. The over-molding in an embodiment is omitted by design as a custom component for use in the present invention. Omitting the balun 206 over-molding reduces component height and width. The balun 206 used in the present module 100 is miniaturized (e.g has a low profile package) by replacing standard through-hole mounting leads with custom surface mount leads 205. The surface mount leads are a feature of the custom balun 206 used for the present invention having PRIMARY and SECONDARY windings connected to points 1-6 (FIG. 7).

(29) The incorporation of surface mount leads 205 for the balun 206 on a first/top side 130a, means that components 220 can be placed on the opposite/bottom side 130b of the printed circuit board 130 under the balun 206 (see FIG. 14-15). Also providing a higher magnetic permeability for the balun 206 allows for a smaller ferrite core and a smaller finished balun 206. The balun used in the module is miniaturized by selecting a ferrite core with a high magnetic permeability. A larger, more typically sized balun uses lower cost, lower magnetic permeability ferrite cores.

(30) Analog Front-End (AFE) 207 provides an integrated circuit interface circuit that resides between the balun 206 connected to the coaxial cable plant that carries complex modulated data and the digital core responsible for processing the demodulated baseband data. In the transmit direction, the AFE 207 is responsible for conditioning and amplifying the signal from the digital processing core for transmission through connected coaxial cable. In the receive direction the AFE is responsible for first normalizing the input signal amplitude then conditioning the complex modulated data inbound from the connected coaxial cable plant in order that it can be decoded by the digital processing core.

(31) Digital Signal Processor/PHYSICAL layer device (DSP/PHY) 208 is an integrated circuit that resides between the AFE 207 and small form-factor pluggable (SFP) 20-pin host connector 209. The DSP/PHY 208 is responsible for adapting data between the host environment, typically Ethernet traffic in the form of a standard SGMII (serial gigabit media independent interface) The complex modulation format is necessary for transmission over the connected coaxial cable plant (via the AFE for signal conditioning and amplification).

(32) Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) 20-pin connector 209 in an embodiment is an edge of the SFP transceiver PCB that mates with the corresponding SFP electrical connector on the host, consistent with the recommended pattern layout and pin assignment described in the SFP multi-source agreement (INF-9074i).

(33) Flash memory 210 is a non-volatile memory chip that holds the configuration settings and information for the AFE 207 and DFE Serial ID EEPROM 211 is a nonvolatile memory chip providing the memory map for static and dynamic data defined in the multi-source agreement SFF-8472. The static serial identification (ID) provides the host information that describes the transceiver module's capabilities, standard interfaces, manufacturer and other related information. The dynamic data is intended to provide the host with real time access to a device operating parameters such as voltage and temperature.

(34) Power Supplies 212 is a system of DC/DC switching power supplies that converts a fixed 3.3 V input voltage to the various voltage rails required for proper operation by the AFE 207, DFE, flash 210 and serial ID EEPROM 211. Turning to FIGS. 8-13, an alternate embodiment of the release lever 1 19 will be described. The lever 119 is slidingly mounted into lower housing 102 so that the a lever body 150 includes three segments, the first segment 151 forming a generally “H” shaped release member 155, an opposite second segment 152 having side serrations 156 for receiving a button 113 thereon and a third segment 153 disposed between the first 151 and second segments 152, the third segment 153 having an opening 157 and a tab 158 extending into a bottom portion of the “H” shaped first segment 151.

(35) The module 100 includes an enlarged end 160 (FIG. 1) having a lever mating area 161 including a finger 162 disposed within the opening 157, a resilient member 114 (e.g. spring or rubber bushing) for receiving the tab 158 thereon and a pair of legs 155a,b of the “H” shaped segment 152 for sliding and engaging a release tab 159. So as depicted in FIGS. 8-9, the lever body 150 may be moved between a latched and unlatched condition (FIG. 9). By pressing on button 113 in direction of arrow A (FIG. 8). A user that applies sufficient counterforce to the resilient member 1 14, can move the first segment 151 against release tab 159 to push the module housing backward in order to release the module 100 from the cage of the host device. As shown in FIG. 9, the resilient member 114 will then return the body 119 to the latched condition. The opening 157 is formed having a corresponding length to the distance required to move the module housing to the delatched condition. Finger 162 abuts the first end of the opening when the body is the latched condition (FIG. 8) and abuts the second end of the opening when the body is in the unlatched condition (FIG. 9).

(36) FIG. 10-11 depicts how the lever body 150 of the release lever 119 is manufactured. The body is stamped from a flat metal sheet as shown in FIG. 10. In FIG. 11 a machine is depicted for rolling and bending the lever body 150 in order to form the release lever body 150 depicted in FIG. 11.

(37) Also, returning to FIG. 2a flange 1 16 which serves as the means for aligning the F-type connector 1 18 to the main printed circuit board 130. Furthermore, in addition to accomplishing proper mechanical alignment relative to PCB 130, the Ftype mounting flange 116 includes a clip 126 which is soldered to the PCB 130 to accomplish an electric connection to ground (GND).

(38) In an embodiment, the module 100 of the present invention may be assembled as follows: a balun is obtained having a ferrite core having high magnetic permeability, having the overmolding removed and having surface mount leads (instead of through hole leads); mounting the balun to a first side of a printed circuit board (PCB) via a surface mount process; mounting other components to a second side of the PCB, casting a housing from an alloy such as zinc alloy or aluminum alloy, stamping a release lever from a flat sheet of metal so that the lever body 150 is symmetrical about a centerline of the body of the lever, the centerfline B-B (FIG. 13a) bisecting the length of the lever body 150; forming the release lever by bending the flat metal to form a first, second and third segment of the release lever and inserting the lever within a mating area of the lower housing 102. The assembly further comprising capturing the PCB 130 and coaxial connector assembly within the upper and lower housing 101, 102 and the assembly including a flange 116 having a resilient clip 126, for mounting to the PCB and grounding the clip 126 and coaxial connector assembly 1 18. Finally, an EMI collar 122 is snapped onto the recess 129 of the housing side 112.

(39) With respect to FIGS. 1-15, the following components are provided as shown in the figures:

(40) 100 module 101—housing upper half 102—housing lower half 105—first housing end 111—housing top 112—housing side 113—Disengager button 114—Elastic member 115—Front body housing 116—Flange 117—Nut 118—F-Type coaxial connector assembly 119—release lever 120—Pivoting latch lever 121—Arm for pivoting latch lever 122—EMI collar 123—Axle for pivoting latch lever 124—fastener 125—Base connecting bar for latch lever 126—clip 127—Release latch 129—PCB support 130—printed circuit board 132—Edge connector to mate with host connector 150—lever body 160 enlarged end 201—input via F-type connector 202—GDT 203—SPD 208—SFP 20 pin connector output 209—FLASH memory 211—Serial ID EEPROM 212—Power supply
The above description discloses only certain preferred embodiments of the invention, yet the full scope of the invention is much broader and should be bound only by claims as issued in a utility patent.