Test and Measurement Channel

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The gigahertz transverse electromagnetic mode (GTEM) cell was first proposed in 1987 1 and subsequently patented in 1989 by D. Konigstein and D. Hansen 2 as a high frequency variant of the transverse electromagnetic mode (TEM) cell, which is also known as the Crawford cell. 3 The GTEM cell...

Generally, an oscillator can be seen as a positive feedback system. It usually consists of an amplifier followed by a resonator, which is fed back to the amplifier input, as shown in Figure 1 . The amplifier task is to compensate for the losses in the resonator, and the...

Accurately measuring the power in wideband signals used in 3G and pulsed systems requires a power meter with a high bandwidth. To address this market condition, the ML2487A (single-channel) and ML2488A (dual-channel) high speed peak power meters have been developed that feature 20 MHz channel bandwidth, which is a...

Frequency synthesizers are fundamental building blocks in any wireless system. The need for reducing component count in wireless systems continues to drive synthesizer integration onto single systems-on-a-chip (SoC). Many multi-standard wireless products are emerging with combinations of WLAN 802.11a/b/g, GSM, Bluetooth, GPS and CDMA. One of the most challenging...

The fast fourier transform (FFT) approach to the method of moments (MoM) is well known for providing high accuracy, high dynamic range and robust electromagnetic (EM) analysis of planar circuits. The FFT consistently calculates the coupling between subsections to full numerical precision; no error is introduced by complex multi-dimensional...

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...