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Guidance freely available

Recently completed EMPIR project ‘Microwave measurements for planar circuits and components’ (14IND02, PlanarCal) aimed to enable the traceable measurement and electrical characterisation of integrated circuits and components used in systems such as mobile communications and radar sensors in driverless cars.

Achievements from the project include:

• FVB together with TU Delft, PTB and FhG developed design guidelines entitled ‘Guidelines for the design of calibration substrates, including the suppression of parasitic modes for frequencies up to and including 325 GHz’. These guidelines are useful for the on-wafer measurement community, which includes manufacturers of calibration substrates as well as advanced users designing their own custom-built calibration substrates.

• The partners developed a Best Practice Guide entitled Best Practice Guide for Planar S-Parameter Measurements using Vector Network Analysers , which presents useful best practice recommendations together with key takeaways developed from the research performed in PlanarCal. The information contained in the guide will be useful for the industrial, scientific, metrological, and circuit-design user community.
• As a world-wide first, PTB together with R&S and FVB demonstrated traceability to dimensional measurements for on-wafer S-parameter measurements on an industrial substrate (fused silica).
• PTB demonstrated that commercial impedance substrates can be used for transferring the low uncertainties from reference calibrations to industrial applications
• As a world-wide first, FhG together with PTB and NPL compared split-block waveguide measurements to conventional on-wafer measurements in D-band (for frequencies in the range from 110 to 170 GHz).

This EMPIR project is co-funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the EMPIR Participating States.

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