Characterization of Millimeter-Wave Active and Passive Components Embedded in Test Fixtures

The performance of millimeter-wave active and passive components is sensitive to the discontinuities associated with the test fixtures. In order to accurately characterize the device-under-test (DUT) and obtain the DUT only performance, the fixture effects must be removed from the overall measurement. Such process is generally referred to as de-embedding. In this work, different de-embedding methods are reviewed and two of these namely the thru-reflect-line (TRL) and the thru-line (TL) are employed to de-embed an edge-coupled band-pass filter (BPF) and a low noise amplifier (LNA) both operating at Ka band. The two DUTs along with the TRL kit are realized on a substrate with dielectric constant of 6.2. Measured results obtained from the two methods are compared.