Design of a High Bandwidth Interposer for Performance Evaluation of ATE Test Fixtures at the DUT Socket

When using automatic test equipment (ATE) or a bench instrumentation measurement setup for measuring integrated circuits for high-speed digital applications it is critical to understand the performance obtained at the connection point between the DUT package and the measurement system, which usually is the DUT socket. In this paper we will explain how to design an interposer with performance above 20 GHz that can be used to probe or stimulate signals at the DUT socket. With this capability it is then possible not only to measure the performance at the DUT socket but also to use the measured data for focus calibration of the measurement system allowing higher measurement accuracy.