Advanced packaging and integrated circuit manufacturing techniques have resulted in multi-port devices that are difficult to characterize using traditional two- or even four-port Vector Network Analyzers (VNAs). A new class of test set extends the capabilities of the traditional VNA to N-ports, which provides full S-Parameter characterization of multi-port devices.rnDenser integration and a trend toward using balanced I/O have increased the number of I/O ports on many devices such as network switches, bridges, and fabric muxes. While the overall performance of the assembly containing an integrated circuit device may improve compared to an earlier discrete component version, the performance of the individual components inside the IC is usually less than that of corresponding discrete components - particularly with regard to isolation. As a result, it is necessary to measure the effect of each port of a multi-port device, on itself and every other port on the device. This is done by measuring the S-Parameters for each two-port pair with all other ports properly terminated or error-corrected.
展开▼
