Telecom hardware is unusual in that the electrical performance is agreed before the artwork exists. A link budget, a loss target and a return-loss figure are negotiated with the customer, and the board only works if every batch reproduces the stack-up those numbers were calculated from. That makes the stack-up the specification, and the fabrication record the proof.
Why impedance is the specification
A controlled-impedance board is not a trace width chosen once. The dielectric, the copper thickness and the layer spacing fix the impedance together, so changing a laminate to save cost or time changes the electrical result. The stack-up is therefore agreed with engineering, frozen on the quotation, and verified on impedance coupons taken from the production panel. The published tolerance and the rest of the process limits are on the capability page.
Choosing the laminate
Where a section runs at a frequency or a loss budget that FR-4 cannot meet, a high-frequency material is used for that section while the digital layers stay on ordinary laminate. Mixed constructions let one board carry both without paying the RF price on every layer. The decision follows the frequency and loss budget of the design; the material list is on the high-frequency PCB page.
Multi-variant builds without a separate line
Networking products arrive as families: one stack-up, several populations, sometimes a variant that differs by a single connector. Each variant is quoted from its own data package, so a small board does not carry the price of the largest one, and a prototype of one to fifty pieces runs on the production lines before the family is released.
Records, confidentiality and visits
Fabrication and assembly share one plant, so an impedance reading, a first-article result and a final test record belong to the same lot record. The inspection sequence is described on quality assurance, and the certificate set — ISO 9001:2015 and UL file E354070 alongside RoHS — is scanned on the certifications page.
Drawings and link budgets can travel under a mutual NDA from the first exchange, and a visit to the Shenzhen or Meizhou plant can be arranged around the processes the board would use. Payment is by bank transfer (T/T), with goods quoted EXW Shenzhen or DDP.
Next step
Send the Gerber set, the stack-up and impedance targets, the BOM if assembly is included, the quantity and the target date. Board families used in telecom work have their own pages — high-frequency, HDI and multilayer — and turnkey assembly covers the build after the board. Security products that share an enclosure with radio front ends are described under security system PCBs, the rest of the industries we serve are on the industries page, and a quote can be requested on the contact page.
