Patent ID: 6300775
Filing Date: 2001-10-09
Classification: G01R

Abstract:
A method of calibrating a scattering (S) parameter measurement system to characterize a multi-port device having n ports, wherein n is greater than or equal to 2, and the S parameter measurement system has at least n test ports, the method comprising the steps of:selecting n/2 test port pairs of the S parameter measurement system by arbitrarily assigning each of the n test ports to at least one of the n/2 test port pairs, wherein each of the n/2 test port pairs is characterized by an error model comprising a plurality of error terms;conducting an S parameter calibration on each of the n/2 test port pairs and storing the S parameter measurements resulting from the calibrations in a memory associated with the S parameter measurement system;calculating the error terms of the error model for each of the n/2 test port pairs using the S parameter measurements taken during the calibrations, and storing these error terms in the memory associated with the S parameter measurement system;decoupling the error terms associated with the n/2 test port pairs into a plurality of constituent error parameters that are local to the n test ports of the n/2 test port pairs, and storing these local error parameters in the memory associated with the S parameter measurement system; andconstructing an error model for each of the test port pairs that were not selected for calibration in the selecting step using the local error parameters for the n test ports from the decoupling step, and storing the associated error terms in the memory of the S parameter measurement system.