Noise measurements of microwave transistors using an uncalibrated mechanical stub tuner and a built-in reverse six-port reflectometer

This paper describes a novel noise parameter measurement technique using a nonrepeatable and uncalibrated mechanical stub tuner and a built-in reverse six-port reflectometer. The main advantages of this approach are: (1) avoiding the use of an automated repeatable mechanical tuner or thermally controlled electronic tuner, (2) the noise and S-parameter characterization of the tuner is not required, (3) the convenience to change the measurement reference plane, without need of further tuner calibration, and (4) the relatively low cost of the test set, compared to a commercial system. Measurements are obtained for the NE 76184 general-purpose GaAs FET and compared to the noise figure calculated using the data provided by the manufacturer for different source impedance values