Printed Circuit Board for a Flat-Panel Speaker
AssigneeSoney Ericsson Mobile Communications AB
InventorsWilliam Chris Eaton, Eric Douglas Romesburg
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A flat-panel speaker is attached to an exterior surface of a printed circuit board (PCB) housed within a consumer electronic device. Rather than place the flat-panel speaker within a sealed speaker box and then attach the speaker box to the PCB, as is conventional, the present invention attaches the flat-panel speaker to the exterior surface of the PCB without the speaker box. Removing the speaker box allows designers to reduce the dimensions of the device, and to minimize the complexity of the device.
Claims20
A printed circuit board (PCB) for a consumer electronic device, the PCB comprising:
- one or more substrate layers having a conductive trace connecting one or more electronic components;
- a flat-panel speaker mounted to an exterior surface of the one or more substrate layers, and comprising a flat-panel element configured to produce audible sound;
- and
- one or more through-holes formed in the one or more substrate layers and extending through an interior of the PCB to an opposing exterior surface of the PCB.
A consumer electronic device comprising:
- a housing;
- an audio port formed in the housing and configured to output audible sound;
- a printed circuit board (PCB) within the housing having a conductive trace connecting one or more electronic components;
- a flat-panel speaker mounted to an exterior surface of the PCB, and comprising a flat-panel element configured to generate the audible sound output through the audio port;
- and
- one or more through-holes formed adjacent the flat-panel element and extending through the interior of the PCB to an opposing exterior surface of the PCB.
A method of outputting audible sound to a user of a consumer electronic device, the method comprising:
- mounting a printed circuit board (PCB) in an interior of a housing of a consumer electronic device;
- mounting a flat-panel speaker to an exterior surface of the PCB;
- forming one or more through-holes adjacent the flat-panel speaker and through an interior of the PCB to an opposing exterior surface of the PCB;
- applying a voltage to the flat-panel speaker to generate audible sound;
- and
- outputting the audible sound from an audio port formed in the housing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.