Calibration on the fly—a novel two-port S-parameter measurement method for on-wafer leaky systems

In this article, we present a two-port on-wafer scattering parameter measurement method to tackle the issue of crosstalk between probes. The proposed method treats the crosstalk separately during the system calibration and the device measurement stages because the crosstalk during these stages is often different due to changes in the measurement conditions after the probes have been calibrated. For example, device under test (DUT) and calibration standards are often situated on different substrates, or the distance between probes during calibration is different from that during DUT measurement. Based on this concept, we develop a new error model in which the crosstalk is treated as a standalone two-port error network in parallel with the two-port calibration standards or DUTs. The two-port crosstalk error generated during probing, ECT, is removed in the system calibration and corrected during the measurement of the DUT by using a dummy pair of open-circuit standards that are fabricated on the same substrate as the DUT. Since the crosstalk is corrected while measuring the DUT, rather than during system calibration, we call this method ``calibration on the fly'' (COF). The method is demonstrated using measurements of a 10-dB attenuator between 140 and 220 GHz

A “Calibration on the Fly” Method for Millimeter-wave On-wafer Measurement

No abstract available

Optimal design of passive devices for verifying on-wafer noise parameter measurement systems

We propose the optimal design of passive devices that can be used to verify on-wafer noise parameter measurement systems. The design principles result from obtaining the minimum relative uncertainties of four noise parameters: Fmin, Rn, Γ|opt|, and ∠Γopt for a wide range of S-parameters of a passive two-port network. A Monte-Carlo (MC) method has been used for the investigation and the simulation results show that |S11| plays a primary role in deciding the optimal design and must be within 0.5 to 0.6. |S21| plays a secondary role in the design and ideally it should be as small as possible. Based on these findings, we designed and fabricated three planar attenuators on a semi-insulating GaAs substrate. The test results (at up to 40 GHz) show excellent agreement with the simulation. This is the first time that the effect of different designs of passive verification devices on the system noise measurement has been analysed and the design principles of optimal passive devices are given

An advanced calibration method for probe leakage correction in on-wafer test systems

No abstract available