You worked hard to create that fancy RF module and along the way you had to come up with innovative solutions to measure the characteristics of a few SMD components that play a crucial role in your design. All this involved making several S-parameter measurements. And at the end of the development process you want to publish your measurements using beautiful graphs that you can use directly in an article or datasheet.
Use our S-parameter viewer to view your S-parameter files, produce good-looking graphs, a [...]
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Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theory
3. Measuring reflection with a directional coupler
4. Applications
5. Conclusions
1. Introduction
Return loss is an important parameters of any RF (Radio Frequency) device. It is a measure of the amount of power reflected at a port. From it, impedance levels can be calculated and amplitude variations in transmission lines predicted. For one port devices, it is the only existing scattering parameter.
Usually, return loss is measured using a directional coupler. [...]
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The landscape of power splitters, combiners, couplers and hybrides can be daunting at first glance. However, when we classify these devices according to their functions and take the different kinds of operating principles into account, the pictures becomes clear. To assist the RF engineer in choosing the right device for the job, we constructed an overview of these devices.
1. A Simple Model of RF Power Splitters, Combiners and Couplers
In this article, we choose to look at all devices as three-port model [...]
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Scattering parameters or S-parameters for short, are the standard way to describe the behaviour of all kind of RF modules. Both passive and active. So, what are these parameters and why are they so popular? In order to fully grasp the full potential of S -parameters, it is useful to lay down some basic concepts first.
(Note: some understanding of transmission line theory is helpful when reading this article)
1. S-parameter basics
The basic idea behind S-parameters is to look at a device (or more generall [...]
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Sometimes it is necessary to block the DC component in a RF signal. There are two main reasons to do so. The first one is to protect equipment or components that can't handle DC signals without damaging them. The second reason is to improve measurement accuracy.
1. Function of DC-blocks in RF applications
1.1 Protection
The most obvious function of a DC-block is to protect components that can't stand DC voltages. For example, a mixer that uses a transformer at its input, as many do! If such a component i [...]
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You worked hard to create that fancy RF module and along the way you had to come up with innovative solutions to measure the characteristics of a few SMD components that play a crucial role in your design. All this involved making several S-parameter measurements. And at the end of the development process you want to publish your measurements using beautiful graphs that you can use directly in an article or datasheet.
Use our S-parameter viewer to view your S-parameter files, produce good-looking graphs, a [...]
Read more >
