Radio frequency subscriber drop units having printed circuit boards with ground plane layers and/or housings with ground walls

A radio frequency (“RF”) subscriber drop unit, comprising:

• a housing having an input port and an output port;
• a printed circuit board mounted in an interior of the housing, the printed circuit board including a dielectric layer, a wiring layer that includes conductive wirings that comprise at least part of a communications path between the input port and the output port that is on a first face of the dielectric layer, and a ground plane layer that includes a conductive ground plane that is on a second face of the dielectric layer;
• and
• at least one of:
• a ledge extending from an inner surface of at least a first side wall of the housing, the ledge being electrically connected to the ground plane;
• and
• at least one projection extending from an inner surface of the housing, wherein the at least one projection is electrically connected to the ground plane,
• wherein the RF subscriber drop unit comprises a 1×2 RF splitter having an insertion loss of less than 3.5 dB at 1 GHz.

A passive RF subscriber drop unit, comprising:

• a housing having an input port and an output port;
• a printed circuit board mounted in an interior of the housing, the printed circuit board including a first face that has a plurality of circuit elements mounted thereon, at least one of which is part of a conductive path that extends from the input port to the output port, and a second face that includes a conductive ground plane;
• and
• a plurality of projections extending from a top wall of the housing that extend through respective ones of a plurality of apertures in the printed circuit board, at least one of the projections being electrically connected to the conductive ground plane.

A radio frequency (“RF”) subscriber drop unit, comprising:

• a housing having a top wall and a plurality of sidewalls that define an open interior;
• an input port that extends from a first of the sidewalls of the housing;
• an output port that extends from a second of the sidewalls of the housing;
• a printed circuit board mounted on a plurality of posts that extend downwardly from an interior face of the top wall of the housing into the open interior of the housing;
• and
• a ground wall that projects downwardly from the interior face of the top wall, the ground wall extending from the first of the sidewalls to the second of the sidewalls,
• wherein the ground wall is electrically connected to a conductive ground plane of the printed circuit board.