Deembedding and unterminating microwave fixtures with the genetic algorithm

A new method of deembedding a test fixture effect from the data of microwave measurements is presented in this paper. It is shown that the traditional unterminating problem (the problem of finding fixture characteristics) being posed in a finite frequency range may be reduced to a problem of fitting the characteristics of the "thru" experiment. The latter is proposed to be solved by using the genetic algorithm (GA). A special trick is suggested to take fixture power loss into consideration, which is sometimes necessary to increase the goodness of fitting the characteristics. Physically correct constraints for optimization variables and optimal parameters of the GA are discussed in this paper. The method is applicable for all microwave fixtures, except for those whose characteristics are influenced by the relative position of the adapters comprising the fixture. The method does not have any specific frequency limitation and does not require any calibration standards. The results of the experiments performed have validated a high efficiency of the method proposed, and confirm that the accuracy of a deembedding problem solution is close to the goodness of fitting data of the "thru" experiment.