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On-Wafer Calibration Technique for High Frequency Measurement with Simultaneous Voltage and Current Tuning

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Abstract

This paper presents a novel on wafer calibration method for the measurement of radio RF passive components with R&S vector network analyzer (VNA) at RF and mm-wave frequency. This method has employed the high frequency structure simulator (HFSS) results along with multi-level optimizations to get the nominal values used for on wafer calibration. Multiline (Thru-reflect-line) TRL calibration standards fabricated on the same substrate are used with better accuracy. Measured results show that a thru line provides less than 0.015 dB insertion loss throughout the frequency range of 1GHz-67GHz. This result is much better compared to the results achieved by conventional Short-open-load-thru (SOLT) calibration and (Thru-reflect-line) TRL calibration using the available calibration substrates. Using this calibration technique, the phase variation of the thru line shows less than 3° at 67GHz which is much lower than 15° achieved by the conventional calibration methods. The measurement of the multi band characteristics of the RF passive components by simultaneous current and voltage application has also been demonstrated successfully.

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Acknowledgments

The work is supported in part by NSF under the Award No 1253929. Fabrication of device using Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors would also like to thanks ANSYS for software support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microwave Applications Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    B. M. Farid Rahman, Yujia Pengpeng, Tengxing Wang & Guoan Wang

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    Tian Xia

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  1. B. M. Farid Rahman
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  2. Yujia Pengpeng
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  3. Tengxing Wang
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  4. Tian Xia
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Correspondence to Yujia Pengpeng.

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Responsible Editor: Th. Haniotakis

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Rahman, B.M.F., Pengpeng, Y., Wang, T. et al. On-Wafer Calibration Technique for High Frequency Measurement with Simultaneous Voltage and Current Tuning. J Electron Test 31, 67–73 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-014-5496-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-014-5496-y

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