Original 45nm Intel® Core™ Microarchitecture

  Section 8 of 12  

The Technical Challenges of Transitioning Intel® PRO/Wireless Solutions to a Half-Mini Card

ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION OF INTEL PRO/Wireless 5300

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is certainly applicable in this case. (Figure 8) shows the actual implementations of the same Intel PRO/Wireless 5300 Network Adaptor Mini Card and Half-Mini Card. It clearly shows how the component partitioning was done keeping the RF shielded components on the top side (component side) and putting low-profile components on the bottom side (print side). The shield size reduction and tight fit of all the RF components under the shielded area shows the necessity to integrate the FEMs. It can also be seen that the tall power inductors (bottom right-hand corner inside the shielded area) are on the top side to enable the lower-cost option. Looking at the MAC BB chip, it is clear that the direct and simplistic routing to the Radio Transceiver chip and to the Host Interface gold fingers connections are maintained in the Full-Mini Card version to enable lower-cost PCB technology. However, this direct and simplistic routing cannot be maintained in the Half-Mini Card version of the board. Nonetheless, the devices were successfully routed using more complex routing in multiple inner layers.

Figure 8: Intel® PROWireless 5300 network adaptor Full-Mini Card and Half-Mini Card implementations

  Section 8 of 12  

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