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One of the greatest challenges in characterizing new coaxial interfaces is to determine an accurate test configuration. When precision airlines are not available it is very difficult to obtain a true measurement of the device under test. It becomes necessary to design and implement calibration standards to eliminate the...

High frequency, voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO) are important components of modern RF systems. They are characterized by a set of parameters, which must be analyzed and optimized (for example, phase noise, frequency tuning range, tuning linearity and output power). Many studies are dedicated to the research of VCO characteristics. 1-8...

When the RF test system and the device-under-test (DUT) both have coaxial connectors, hooking them together to make a measurement is easy. However, as radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFIC) have shrunk in size, traditional coaxial connectors are no longer useful. With the multitude of RF component sizes and shapes found...

Broadband synthesizers based on direct digital synthesis (DDS) technology have traditionally led the industry in frequency agility and switching performance, but have also led in high NRE and recurring costs. These high costs stem from the custom nature of DDS-based synthesizers and have resulted in digital synthesizers being primarily...

Precise device characterization is the starting point of any good circuit design. This task can be particularly challenging when the device is a high power transistor having low input and output impedances. For devices working only under pulse conditions, specific test benches exist 1 but are rather complicated and...

A comb generator is a device with outputs that are multiple harmonics of an input signal. The output spectral tone lines are uniformly spaced at integer multiples of the input reference. A spectrum analyzer display of the output looks much like the teeth of a comb, which is how...

Used for remote sensing in various applications and environments, microwave and millimeter-wave radiometers (RM) require frequent calibration. Microwave radiometers measure noise temperature using a suitable antenna which is designed to match a scene of interest, as shown in Figure 1 . In a technical sense, if the antenna's main...

Cellular base station receivers work in the presence of high level blockers/interferers while being required to sense weak signals of interest at the antenna. The interferers are usually rejected by filters but only at an intermediate frequency (IF) after the first down conversion. The LNA and mixer preceding the...

The main criterion when an EM engineer uses modeling and design packages is that it should enable him to meet his daily challenges of designing new products that work in their intended environment. This is now becoming a reality with the advent of the Micro-stripes Version 6.1 3D-EM modeling...

Applied Wave Research Inc. (AWR™) has focused on an engineering effort to eliminate uncertainty in the high frequency design process by closing gaps in existing design methodologies and strengthening the links between system specifications and circuit performance, electrical design and physical layout, and computer simulation and RF measurements. This...