help me get VNA ASCII data to a smith chart *solved* - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / rf-microwave

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 08:14:48 pm
content: My HP network analyzer has produced data on floppy drive, as I finally decided to get a floppy drive.The files it provides are like this, I just saved a portion of it because its all the same"CHANNEL: 1""MEASURE TYPE: AR""FORMAT TYPE: LOGMP""NUMBER of POINTS: 201""SWEEP TIME: 64.32 ms""SWEEP TYPE: LINF""SOURCE POWER: 0 dBm""IF BANDWIDTH: 30 kHz""Frequency" "Main Array" "Sub Array"1.00000000000E+04 -6.168857E+01 1.102831E+021.50995000000E+06 -1.036961E+02 1.089870E+013.00990000000E+06 -1.040056E+02 4.660721E+014.50985000000E+06 -1.055440E+02 -1.333070E+026.00980000000E+06 -1.088468E+02 -9.875658E+017.50975000000E+06 -1.026027E+02 -1.673727E+029.00970000000E+06 -1.017993E+02 2.504533E+011.05096500000E+07 -9.640530E+01 2.220368E+011.20096000000E+07 -1.084803E+02 -5.090896E+011.35095500000E+07 -1.054747E+02 -6.037479E+01I assume array and subarray and phase and magnitude, anyway I can figure it out when I save data thats not open circuit floating measurement (garbage).I tried a smith chart program and it wants file formats I do not have. This just saves TXT to a floppy disk, it seems to be separated by spaces, I open it in notepad.How can I get this data into a smith chart?I was hoping there are easy to use applications that can handle this, I had a previous thread on this but I could not offer the data because I did not have a floppy or floppy drive to actually see it. Now my fixture is close to ready and I wanted to get some graphs. I tried the microwave 101 smith chart excel thing but its very confusing. I was hoping to copy paste it into something like RFsim99 if I can figure out how to select just a column from a text documentI am googling what s1p looks like and this seems similar. i feel like im trying to get a vending machine to accept a dollar that looks fine but it wont accept. I almost feel like I can somehow modify the notepad document to turn this into a S1P file some how.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 08:30:29 pm
content: Read up how touchstone file format works. Creating a touchstone file (s1p) is easy. For example here or everywhere else:http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/ads2004a/cktsim/ck04a8.htmlHere kind of official spec for touchstone:https://ibis.org/touchstone_ver2.0/touchstone_ver2_0.pdfIt is like the same table of frequency, mag, phase and a suitable header in the beginning.And the format of the file above you posted seems also self-explanatory. It even states FORMAT: LOGMP (log magnitude phase)

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 08:35:07 pm
content: i have no idea how to manipulate itis there a smith chart program I can drag the data into columns with

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:18:24 pm
content: Most smithchart software, simulators or whatever RF software definitely work with touchstone files. So grab the freaking data and make a touchstone file out of it.Put the data columns in another text file having the appropriate s1p appendix, and add a suitable header in the beginning of the file. I have sent you clear manuals how it should look like. There are even examples in the specification document from IBIS. Just tweak some example header to fit your data format!For example put something like this in a text file named yourdata.s1p:Code:# Hz S DB R 501.00000000000E+04 -6.168857E+01 1.102831E+021.50995000000E+06 -1.036961E+02 1.089870E+013.00990000000E+06 -1.040056E+02 4.660721E+014.50985000000E+06 -1.055440E+02 -1.333070E+026.00980000000E+06 -1.088468E+02 -9.875658E+017.50975000000E+06 -1.026027E+02 -1.673727E+029.00970000000E+06 -1.017993E+02 2.504533E+011.05096500000E+07 -9.640530E+01 2.220368E+011.20096000000E+07 -1.084803E+02 -5.090896E+011.35095500000E+07 -1.054747E+02 -6.037479E+01Is it difficult? No!PS: You could probably even use Matlab (Octave, Scilab or whatever) to plot data points into a smith chart. Should be also dead easy and I am pretty confident it should be also able to display a smith chart.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:27:12 pm
content: putting the new thing in the front of the file allows it to load into rfsim99.I also tried it with the Smith program by professor Fritz Dellsperger and it appears to load in the datathank you, so all you need to do is restructure the header, I thought it would need commas or other weird stuff, or that it would complain about the number of spaces and stuff like that, or complain about the exponent notationit seems its just a crease on the dollar not a currency exchange machine

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:37:53 pm
content: Yeah, sometimes seeing stuff for the first time may be intimidating, but touchstone files are nothing difficult to get understanding of. It is an industry well known file format and I am kind of surprised your measurement instrument does not export directly the touchstone file. It likely should :-O

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:55:52 pm
content: it is a E5100A it can do binary or ASCII

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 01, 2021, 05:57:09 am
content: turns out this thing is a impedance analyzer, I tried a 825 0.1% ohm SMD 0603 chip resistor and it gave me between 775 and 850 over the 300MHz span, with series setupis that reasonable?