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Prior to the circuit design and especially in larger designs, EM tools are used to create “library” parts such as inductors, transitions and antennas. While these parts are fairly self-contained, they must ultimately be integrated into the overall design where at the very least they must be connected to the rest of the circuit or in a more complex case be coupled to it. During both early and later stages of design, designers will switch from circuit-based models to EM analysis of critical interconnects to better understand couplings and achieve greater accuracy.

This paper describes a technique developed by Rohde & Schwarz for the network analyzers of the R&S®ZVA family: It allows high-precision group delay measurements of converters and mixers even without access to the local oscillator or the reference signal. This technique uses a two-tone signal to stimulate the mixer or converter. The phase difference between these two carriers is measured at the input and the output of the DUT (device under test) to calculate the group delay from the phase shift caused by the DUT.