FastCAL PD-Meter: A Self-Calibrating, Millimeter Wave, Advanced Architected, Power Density Meter

Knox Electronic Technologies will develop a power density measurement platform that meets the requirements expressed in SBIR Subtopic AD07-043 with a measurement uncertainty of ± 0.4 dB at 100 GHz and that can be used in electromagnetic fields that are greater than 1 W/cm2. Existing power density meters can only measure as high as 40 GHz with reported accuracies of ± 1.0 dB, and they are extremely temperamental. Diode-based sensors can especially be a problem when information is lacking with respect to the signal one is trying to measure. Knox Electronics' approach is to employ vector network analyses using stable, characterized, highly accurate passive transfer standards that are relatively simple to develop, very stable at millimeter wave frequencies, and are immune to temperature drift. In this way, system uncertainties can be treated as systematic errors. This effort will include innovative power measurement techniques, digital receivers and “state-of-the-art” DSP techniques for improving measurement uncertainties, application of reciprocity theory using millimeter wave heterodyne receivers, and a using vector network analysis with a DSP-based single port reflectometer and passive termination to generate a 3-term error- corrected reference plane.