Electrical connector assembly with better anti-interference and grounding effects

[0001] The present invention relates generally to an electrical connector assembly, and particularly to an electrical connector assembly having a metal shield member.

[0002] U.S. patent Ser. No. 10/559,930 discloses an electrical connector assembly comprising a high-speed terminal and a sideband terminal. The sideband terminal is mounted to the external printed circuit board, and the high-speed terminal is connected to a cable. No shielding measures are taken at the connection between the cable and the high-speed terminal, which affects the transmission effect of the signal.

[0003] An improved electrical connector assembly is desired.

[0004] The objective of the present invention is to provide an electrical connector assembly with better anti-interference and grounding effects.

[0005] To achieve the above object, an electrical connector assembly comprises: an insulative housing forming a front mating slot and a rear receiving space; a terminal module assembly received in the insulative housing and including an upper part and a lower part stacked with each other in a vertical direction, each of the upper part and the lower part comprising a high-speed terminal module and a sideband terminal module, each of the high-speed terminal modules including a plurality of ground terminals and differential pair terminals arranged alternately with the ground terminals in a transverse direction perpendicular to the vertical direction; a cable connected to the high-speed terminal module; and a ground bar located at a rear of the ground terminal and a metal shield member discrete from the ground terminal, the ground bar including a first bulged section, the metal shield member including a second bulged section, the first bulged section and the second bulged section cooperating with each other to surround the cable in a circumferential direction.

[0006] Compared to prior art, in the electrical connector assembly of the present invention includes a ground bar located at the rear end of the ground terminal and a metal shield member separately from the ground terminal, the ground bar includes a first bulged section, the metal shield member includes a second bulged section, and the first bulged section and the second bulged section cooperate with each other to surround the corresponding cable in the circumferential direction to form a better shielding effect and achieve better anti-interference and grounding effects.

[0023] Referring to FIGS. 1-16, an electrical connector assembly 100 in accordance with the present invention is shown. The electrical connector assembly 100 can be matched with a mating connector (not shown) along the front-to-back direction and comprises an insulative housing 10, a terminal module assembly 40 received in the insulating housing 10, and plural cables 50 connected to the terminal module assembly 40. The housing 10 has a front mating slot 101 and a rear receiving space 102. The terminal module assembly 40 is received in the rear receiving space 102 from rear to the front. The front mating slot 101 can accommodate the mating tongue of the mating connector.

[0024] The terminal module assembly 40 includes an upper part 401 and a lower part 402 stacked with each other in the vertical direction. Each of the upper part 401 and the lower part 402 include a high-speed terminal module 404 and a sideband terminal module 405 assembled on the high-speed terminal module 404. The high-speed terminal module 404 of the upper part 401 and the lower part 402 are essentially arranged in a mirror image manner in the vertical direction. The high-speed terminal module 404 of the upper part 401 includes a first terminal module 411 and a second terminal module 421 under the first terminal module 411. The high-speed terminal module 404 of the lower part 402 includes a third terminal module 431 and a fourth terminal module 441 under the third terminal module 431. Each of the first terminal module 411, the second terminal module 421, the third terminal module 431 and the fourth terminal module 441 includes a unitary insulator 450 and a plurality of conductive terminals 415 (see FIG. 13) integrally formed with the insulator 450 via insert-molding.

[0025] Based upon the similarity of the four terminal modules, only the first terminal module 411 is described in detail. The insulator 450 includes a middle sector 452 and a pair of side sector 453 located by two sides of the middle sector 452 in the transverse direction. The conductive terminals 415 are divided into two groups retained in the corresponding side sector 453. Each group of the conductive terminals 415 includes two pairs of differential pair terminals 413 arranged alternately with three ground terminals 414.

[0026] The sideband terminal module 405 includes an upper sideband sub-module 560 located in the upper part 401 and a lower sideband sub-module 570 located in the lower part 402. The upper sideband sub-module 560 includes a plurality of upper wafer 561 stacked in the transverse direction, and the lower sideband sub-module 570 includes a plurality of lower wafer 571 stacked in the transverse direction. Each of the upper wafers 561 includes an upper fixing member 566, and an upper sideband terminal 562 and a lower sideband terminal 563 integrally formed with the upper fixing member 566 via an insert-molding process. Each of the lower wafers 571 includes a lower fixing member 576, and an upper sideband terminal 573 and a lower sideband terminal 572 integrally formed with a lower fixing member 576 via an insert-molding process. Each of the sideband terminals of the sideband terminal module 405 is assembled in the middle sector 452 of the corresponding insulator 450. In this way, in the transverse direction, the two groups of the conductive terminals 415 are respectively located on two sides of the sideband terminals. Each of the sideband terminal, the differential pair terminal 413 and the ground terminal 414 has a mating portion 506 at the front for mating with the mating connector. Each of the sideband terminals further has a sideband tail 507 that can be directly mounted on a printed circuit board. Each of the differential pair terminal 413 further has a tail portion 508 mechanically and electrically connected to the corresponding cable 50. The rear end of the tail portion 509 of the ground terminal 414 is provided with a ground bar 470. The ground bar 470 is integrally connected with at least one of the three ground terminals 414. Specifically, in the present invention, the ground bar 470 is integrally connected with the ground terminal 414 in the middle.

[0027] The mating portions 506 of the upper sideband terminals 562 on the upper part is aligned with the mating portions 506 of the conductive terminals 415 of the first terminal module 411 in the lateral direction. The mating portions 506 of the upper lower sideband terminals 563 is aligned with the mating portions 506 of the conductive terminals 415 of the second terminal module 421 in the lateral direction. Similarly, the mating portions 506 of the lower upper sideband terminals 573 is aligned with the mating portions 506 of the conductive terminals 415 of the third terminal module 431 in the lateral direction, the mating portions 506 of the lower sideband terminals 572 in the lower part is aligned with the mating portions 506 of the conductive terminals 415 of the fourth terminal modules 441 in the lateral direction.

[0028] The terminal module assembly 40 further comprises a metal fixing member 460 fixing the upper part 401 and the lower part 402 together, so that the terminal module assembly 40 is integrated assembled into the insulating housing 10.

[0029] The cable 50 includes a pair of inner conductors 510, a pair of inner insulative layers 520, a common metal shielding layer 530 and an outer layer 540 covering the common shielding layer 530. The pair of inner conductors 510 are soldered to the corresponding tails 508 of the differential pair terminals 413. The common shielding layer 530 is mechanically and electrically connected to the ground bar 470.

[0030] The electrical connector assembly 100 further includes a metal shield member 60 which is discrete from the ground terminal 414. Each of the ground bar 470 includes two first bulged sections 471 and three first level sections 473. The metal shield member 60 includes two second bulged sections 601 and three second level sections 603. The first bulged sections 471 and the second bulged sections 601 cooperate with each other to completely cover the exposed part of the common shielding layer 530. Both the first bulged sections 471 and the second bulged sections 601 are in contact with the corresponding common shielding layer 530 and are electrically connected thereto.

[0031] The metal shield member 60 is mechanically and electrically connected to the ground terminal 414 and the ground bar 470. Specifically, in the present invention, the rear half of the second level sections 603 of the metal shield member 60 cooperates with the corresponding first level sections 473 in the vertical direction. The front half of the second level sections 603 of the metal shield member 60 cooperates with the corresponding ground terminal 414 in the vertical direction. Each of the second level section 603 has holes 613 for solder, through which the metal shield member 60 directly soldered to the ground bar 470 and the ground terminal 414. The matching dimension d (see FIG. 15) of the first level section 473 and the second level section 603 in the transverse direction is at least half of the matching dimension D (see FIG. 15) of the first bulged section 471 and the second bulged section 601. The metal shield member 60 is formed by punching and bending from a metal sheet. In production, in order to facilitate the installation and positioning of the metal shield member 60, the metal shield member 60 connected to the two sides of the same high speed terminal module are connected together through connecting strips 610, which is removed after the metal shield member 60 is soldered on the ground bar 470 and the ground terminal 414. In the present invention, the metal shielding member 60 connects the common shielding layer 530, the ground terminal 414 and the ground bar in series, which has a better grounding effect and improves the signal transmission performance of the connector assembly.

[0032] In the electrical connector assembly 100 of the present invention, the first bulged sections 471 of the ground bar 470 cooperates with the second bulged sections 601 of the metal shield member 60 to completely surround the corresponding cables 50 in the circumferential direction which improves the signal transmission performance of the connector assembly.

[0033] The electrical connector assembly 100 of the present invention conforms to the specification of QSFP-DD (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable Double Density), which defines eight transmitting channels and eight receiving channels, the signal transmission rate of each channel can reach 50 Gbps or above. Of course, the present invention can also be applied to high-speed electrical connectors assembly such as SFP-DD (Small Form-factor Pluggable Double Density), SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable), OSFP (Octal Small Form-factor Pluggable), etc.