Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Passive Intermodulation Under Different Spring Contact Conditions, Shengxuan Xia, Emmanuel Olugbade, Yuchu He, Yansheng Wang, Hanfeng Wang, Krishna Rao, Marco Poort, Haicheng Zhou, Warren Lee, Nicholas Mcdonnell, Jonghyun Park, Chulsoon Hwang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modularized designs have been widely used in today's consumer electronic devices and flexible RF springs are used for electrical connections between the modules. In the meantime, aluminum alloy material becomes a common chassis option. It is well known that the oxidized chassis surface introduces a certain level of nonlinearity when contacted by the springs, as known as passive intermodulation (PIM). PIM is one of the well-known root causes of the RF desensitization (desense). This paper is focused on investigating the relationship between PIM and contact conditions of the springs, especially contact area. The PIM level behavior is explained mathematically by …