Measurement of Noncoaxial Multiport Devices Up to the Intrinsic Ports

Even in light of all the multiport vector network analyzers (VNAs) that appear to be on the market at present, the measurement of noncoaxial multiport devices remains a critical challenge due to the lack of a multiport counterpart of the two-port thru-reflect-line (TRL) calibration. Accordingly, based on the concept of virtual auxiliary termination and the two-port TRL calibration technique, a scattering matrix reconstruction procedure is developed for the use of a two-port VNA to characterize noncoaxial multiport devices up to the intrinsic ports located at the ends of the planar transmission lines such as microstrips, coplanar waveguides, and substrate integrated waveguides (SIWs). The four-port scattering matrix of a 60-GHz SIW 0-dB coupler for experimental validation is reconstructed. The final results are in agreement with not only the simulation results, but also the fully corrected TRL results.