Traceable RF Power Metering Procedures With Thermoelectric Sensors

Published

September 4, 2024

Author(s)

Zenn Roberts, Aaron Hagerstrom, Cole Gray, Angela Stelson, Vincent Neylon, Christian Long

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains the United State's primary standards for traceable RF and mm-wave power measurements. These measurements require special sensors that carry no active electronics, and that have operating principles and measurement uncertainties that are amenable to simple models. Currently, the primary standards in the 2.4 mm connector type are power sensors that use temperature-dependent platinum thin-film resistors as a power sensing element. These sensors are not commercially available, which raises concerns about the sustainability of traceability based on these sensors. These concerns motivated us to explore the option of using thermoelectric power sensors. In this paper, we describe a power metering procedure, and a preliminary uncertainty analysis for a power sensor that could be used for traceable measurements. With our metering procedure, we see good linearity up to about 17 mW, weak temperature dependence, and an overall fractional measurement uncertainty of about 0.15% (k = 1).

Conference Dates

June 21-24, 2024

Conference Location

Washington DC, DC, US

Conference Title

103rd ARFTG Microwave Measurement Conference

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/ARFTG61196.2024.10661070

Local Download

Keywords

Microwave measurement, Power measurement, Radio Frequency, Thermoelectric devices.

Citation

Roberts, Z. , Hagerstrom, A. , Gray, C. , Stelson, A. , Neylon, V. and Long, C. (2024), Traceable RF Power Metering Procedures With Thermoelectric Sensors, 103rd ARFTG Microwave Measurement Conference, Washington DC, DC, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/ARFTG61196.2024.10661070, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957634 (Accessed October 20, 2025)