Patent ID: 7688456

Claim:
A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for assessing a measurement system under test (MSUT), the program product comprising: (a) program code configured to measure a dimension of the plurality of structures using a reference measurement system (RMS) to generate a first data set, and calculate an RMS uncertainty (U RMS ) from the first data set, where the RMS uncertainty (U RMS ) is defined as one of an RMS precision and an independently determined RMS total measurement uncertainty (TMU RMS ); (b) program code configured to measure the dimension of the plurality of structures using the MSUT to generate a second data set, and calculate a precision of the MSUT from the second data set; (c) program code configured to conduct a linear regression analysis of the first and second data sets to determine a corrected precision of the MSUT and a net residual error; (d) program code configured to determine a total measurement uncertainty (TMU) for the MSUT by removing the RMS uncertainty (U RMS ) from the net residual error; and (e) program code configured to output the TMU to a system capable of optimizing the MSUT.