Method to remove the effects of LO drift from vector network analyzer measurements

• US 10,459,018 B2
• Filed: 05/03/2017
• Issued: 10/29/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Eight Ten Labs LLC
• Original Assignee: Eight Ten Labs LLC
• Inventors: Arsenovic, Alex
• Primary Examiner(s): Shin, Jeffrey M
• Application Number:
  US15/585,220
• Publication Number:
  US 20170324375A1
• Time in Patent Office: 909 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 27/28 Measuring attenuation, gain, phase shift or derived characteristics of electric four pole networks, i.e. two-port networks; Measuring transient response in line transmission systems H04B3/46

Abstract

Certain exemplary embodiments can provide a method, which can comprise automatically removing effects of local oscillator phase drift occurring in between two measurements of reciprocal networks as made with a vector network analyzer. The method can further comprise determining that the vector network analyzer substantially simultaneously samples all incident and reflected waves from the reciprocal networks.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining a local oscillator phase drift occurring in between two measurements of reciprocal networks as made with a vector network analyzer via a calculation of an equation;

2. The method of claim of 1, further comprising:

automatically removing the local oscillator phase drift.

3. The method of claim of 1, further comprising:

determining that the vector network analyzer substantially simultaneously samples all incident and reflected waves from the reciprocal networks.

4. The method of claim of 1, further comprising:

determining switch error terms of the vector network analyzer.

5. The method of claim of 1, further comprising:

applying switch error term correction to measurements.

6. The method of claim of 1, further comprising:

measuring a response from each of the reciprocal networks with the vector network analyzer.

7. The method of claim of 1, wherein:

the local oscillator phase drift is removed from one or more transmissive standards during a calibration of the vector network analyzer.

8. A method comprising:

detecting that a local oscillator phase drift of value larger than ±

π

/2 radians has occurred, and choosing a correct branch of a complex argument of

an equation;

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

sampling incident and reflected waves to detect branch jumps through changes in local oscillator phase drift over samples.