Autonomous impedance tuner with human control interface
First Claim
1. An autonomous stand-alone electromechanical impedance tuner, comprising:
- a microwave impedance synthesis algorithm stored in a non-transitory memory that synthesizes user defined impedance patterns in the reflection factor plane/Smith chart, andwherein said tuner comprises a low loss slotted airline/slabline between a test port and an idle port, one or more metallic probes that are positioned inside the slot of said slabline and can be moved horizontally and vertically into the slabline using remotely controlled electric motors and motor drive circuitry;
an on-board digital processor with associated firmware and associated memory for the purpose of uploading calibration data;
a digital alpha-numeric display showing the tuner state and response, and controlled through a human control interface, said human control interface allowing a user to activate said impedance synthesis algorithm, which then computes said tuner'"'"'s probe positions to create said user-defined pattern on the Smith chart and scans all impedances lying on said pattern and controls said motors of said tuner in order to move said probes to the appropriate positions to synthesize a desired impedance.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An electro-mechanical microwave impedance tuner operates as a stand-alone instrument and includes on-board digital processor, firmware, memory, digital display and human control interface, in form of a joystick, mouse, keyboard or tactile (touch sensitive) screen in order to recognize and execute commands for moving the tuner motors and probes, generating required microwaves impedances and calculating losses and de-embedding to reference planes different than the tuner ports. Before being used in operations the tuner can also be controlled by a control computer in order to be calibrated on a network analyzer and the data can be uploaded into the on-board memory in order to be used in the above calculations. During measurement and tuning operations the tuner is therefore stand-alone and totally independent of a control computer.
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Citations
10 Claims
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1. An autonomous stand-alone electromechanical impedance tuner, comprising:
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a microwave impedance synthesis algorithm stored in a non-transitory memory that synthesizes user defined impedance patterns in the reflection factor plane/Smith chart, and wherein said tuner comprises a low loss slotted airline/slabline between a test port and an idle port, one or more metallic probes that are positioned inside the slot of said slabline and can be moved horizontally and vertically into the slabline using remotely controlled electric motors and motor drive circuitry; an on-board digital processor with associated firmware and associated memory for the purpose of uploading calibration data; a digital alpha-numeric display showing the tuner state and response, and controlled through a human control interface, said human control interface allowing a user to activate said impedance synthesis algorithm, which then computes said tuner'"'"'s probe positions to create said user-defined pattern on the Smith chart and scans all impedances lying on said pattern and controls said motors of said tuner in order to move said probes to the appropriate positions to synthesize a desired impedance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A method for using an autonomous stand-alone electromechanical impedance tuner, said tuner comprising an input port and an output port and a slabline between said ports and one or more conductive capacitive probes remotely insertable into the slot of said slabline, wherein the probes can be moved horizontally and vertically into the slabline using remotely controlled electric motors and motor drive circuitry;
- an on-board digital processor with associated firmware and associated memory for the purpose of uploading calibration data;
a digital alpha-numeric display showing the tuner state and response; and
a human control interface that activates an impedance synthesis algorithm, the method comprising;synthesizing, using the microwave impedance synthesis algorithm stored in a non-transitory memory, user defined impedance pattern in the reflection factor plane/Smith chart; controlling the probe positions with a human control interface coupled to the tuner; and activating tuning routines from a menu with the human control interface. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10)
- an on-board digital processor with associated firmware and associated memory for the purpose of uploading calibration data;
Specification