Shuw-Guann Lin

A de-embedding method for extracting S-parameters of vertical interconnect in advanced packaging

An extracting methodology is proposed to characterize the performance of interconnect. This work successfully extracts the interconnect by using transmission matrix (T-matrix) for calculation. This method exhibits its validity without frequency limitation mathematically. It can deal with most kinds of vertical interconnects including bond-wires, micro-bumps and through-silicon-vias (TSVs). Details of equations and measurement procedure are reported in this work. The bump in flip-chip process is taken as an example. The analysis is depicted and the measured results are performed for verification up to 20 GHz.

High phase accuracy on-wafer measurement for quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator

An on-wafer measurement technique is proposed to characterize the phase accuracy of QVCO. The procedure of calibration and measurement is illustrated in details. An I/Q phase error of a QVCO was precisely measured using the receiver mode of VNA. An on-chip Cal Kit was designed and fabricated for de-embedding system error. A 5 GHz QVCO was then tested to demonstrate the feasibility of measurement and showed excellent quadrature accuracy within 1deg.

On-wafer single contact quadrature accuracy measurement using receiver mode in four-port vector network analyzer

This paper presents the calibration procedure using a five-port calibration kit based on receiver mode in vector network analyzer (VNA). After de-embedding the phase/amplitude errors from cal-kit, the quadrature phase accuracy and amplitude error of a quadrature voltage controlled oscillator (QVCO) can be directly obtained using on-wafer testing with a single contact. A 5 GHz QVCO was tested to demonstrate the feasibility of measurement. The I/Q mismatch on both phase and amplitude of the QVCO were precisely measured. Only single probe contact is required during the measurement that minimizes the uncertainty.

Full-span error calibration method for on-chip quadrature accuracy measurement

This study focuses on a full-span calibration and detection methods of an on-wafer measurement system for quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO). The quadrature accuracy, namely I/Q imbalances, of the QVCO was accurately measured by a high-speed oscilloscope. An on-chip calibration kit (Cal Kit) was applied to de-embed the system errors. This paper describes the test setup and calibration procedures in detail. The proposed method provides an effective full-span vertical calibration, skew calibration, and phase and amplitude differences measurement in an on-wafer measurement system. Finally, a 5 GHz QVCO was fabricated to verify the proposed methodology.

Bit error rate measurement system for RF integrated circuits

This paper proposes a bit error rate (BER) measurement system utilizing vector signal analyzer (VSA) instrument built-in analog digital converter (ADC) and ideal digital baseband receiver of VSA software for RF integrated circuits (RFICs) such as RF amplifier, RF mixer and RF receiver. Usually, BER performance is estimated in transceiver with built-in digital baseband circuits. In the past, RF designers could not estimate RFICs effect to BER test without digital baseband circuits and vice versa for digital baseband designers. It is helpful to understand RFICs without digital baseband circuits to BER test can reduce certain risk before integrating RFICs with digital baseband circuits. Therefore, an implementation of output signal to noise ratio (SNR) calibration in a specified bandwidth and measurement method combined VSA instrument, VSA software and Advanced Design System (ADS) is used for BER measurement.

Phase noise and transient measurement methods for V-band applications

This study develops a dual-path cross-correlation technique and a single-path cascade method for phase noise and transient measurements up to the V-band frequency region. Further, this paper presents the complete test setup and test procedure. Results of the analyses of the single-path cascade measurement method and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) floor effects are also discussed in detail. We demonstrate a good agreement between the two proposed techniques.

Digital Modulation/Demodulation Measurement System within Connected Solution

This paper proposes a digital modulation /demodulation measurement system implemented by the Agilent advanced design system (ADS)-connected solution with vector signal analyzer (VSA) software, VSA instrument built into an analog digital converter (ADC), and an ESG vector signal generator. The ADS system software is suitable to design a digital modulation signal for error vector magnitude (EVM) analysis in RF transmitter (TX). The bit error rate (BER) analysis in RF receiver (RX) was estimated by the recording file from VSA software simultaneously. The proposed testing platform can measure the characteristics of RF transceivers, such as EVM, BER, constellation, and eye diagrams. The nonlinearity and distortion properties were evaluated through the EVM system parameter.