PCB via field with embedded pitch transformation for ATE pogo pin blocks

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of two different printed circuit board (PCB) via field designs for high density ATE pogo pin interconnects running at Gb/s data rates. The first design is a simple straight through, one-for-one, pogo pin to via design while the second is a higher performance via design that does a transformation of the pogo pin pitch. The higher performance design takes the non-uniform signal/ground pin map of the high density pogo block and translates it to a uniform signal-ground-signal topology to increase the useable bandwidth.