Noise temperature of an electronic tuner for noise parameter measurement systems

In this paper, the noise temperature of an electronic tuner is determined and its significance for the suitability of such tuners in noise parameter measurement systems discussed. The noise temperature of the tuner was found to be higher than the ambient room temperature in the laboratory and vary significantly between tuner states. For impedance states with small input reflections coefficients, the excess noise temperature is around 25 K. For some of the states with higher reflection coefficients, this figure increases, reaching around 45 K at |Γ| = 0.75. Unless accounted for, this leads to errors in noise parameter extraction when using an electronic tuner in noise parameter measurements.