Impact of different post-processing methods on a one-receiver 2-port synthetic VNA architecture

Production test of RF and electronic circuits is mainly driven by two restrictions, the initial investment in the equipment and the required measurement time, mostly describing the overall cost of test. This is one reason for the increased interest in synthetic instrumentation. The measurement of complex scattering parameters using synthetic instruments has been demonstrated. Improvement of the measurement accuracy and the speed while preserving a cost efficient solution is the focus of this contribution. Comparing the hardware demands using different calibration and post-processing steps gives an insight into a cost efficient design of a synthetic Vector Network Analyzer (sVNA).