The Conductance Analyzer

The following paper describes an instrument, the conductance analyzer, which was designed to aid in the study of nonlinear, resistive, two-terminal, solid-state, mixer devices (e.g., tunnel diodes, backward diodes, and crystal diodes). The instrument directly measures and indicates the coefficients of the first few terms of the Fourier series expansion of the time-varying conductance generated in the mixing process. The principle of operation, the circuitry, the calibration procedure, and a discussion of the performance of the instrument are presented.