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Traceable RF Power Metering Procedures With Thermoelectric Sensors.

Published by National Institute of Standards and Technology | National Institute of Standards and Technology | Metadata Last Checked: August 02, 2025 | Last Modified: 2024-02-08 00:00:00
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains the United States' primary standards for traceable RF and mm-wave power measurements. In the 2.4 mm connector type, the specialized sensors that NIST currently uses as primary standards are not commercially available, which raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of NIST's measurement capabilities. These concerns motivated us to explore the option of using commercially available 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 RF power measurements. With our metering procedure we see good metered power linearity up to about 17 mW of RF power, weak temperature dependence, and an overall fractional measurement uncertainty of about 0.10\% (k = 1).

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Complete Metadata
@type dcat:Dataset
accessLevel public
accrualPeriodicity irregular
bureauCode 
                                            [
  "006:55"
]
contactPoint 
                                            {
  "fn": "Zenn Roberts",
  "hasEmail": "mailto:zenn.roberts@nist.gov"
}
description The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains the United States' primary standards for traceable RF and mm-wave power measurements. In the 2.4 mm connector type, the specialized sensors that NIST currently uses as primary standards are not commercially available, which raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of NIST's measurement capabilities. These concerns motivated us to explore the option of using commercially available 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 RF power measurements. With our metering procedure we see good metered power linearity up to about 17 mW of RF power, weak temperature dependence, and an overall fractional measurement uncertainty of about 0.10\% (k = 1).
distribution 
                                            [
  {
    "title": "ClosedLoopScatterPlotData10GHz",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/ClosedLoopScatterPlotData10GHz.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "ClosedLoopScatterPlotData1GHz",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/ClosedLoopScatterPlotData1GHz.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "ClosedLoopScatterPlotData200MHz",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/ClosedLoopScatterPlotData200MHz.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "ClosedLoopScatterPlotData50GHz",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/ClosedLoopScatterPlotData50GHz.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "OpenLoopDataBottom",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/OpenLoopDataBottom.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "OpenLoopDataTop",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/OpenLoopDataTop.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "UncertaintyData",
    "mediaType": "text/csv",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/UncertaintyData.csv"
  },
  {
    "title": "readme",
    "mediaType": "text/plain",
    "downloadURL": "https://data.nist.gov/od/ds/mds2-3175/readme.txt"
  }
]
identifier ark:/88434/mds2-3175
issued 2024-04-22
keyword 
                                            [
  "calibration services",
  "measurement",
  "power",
  "power metering",
  "radio frequency",
  "thermoelectric sensor"
]
landingPage https://data.nist.gov/od/id/mds2-3175
language 
                                            [
  "en"
]
license https://www.nist.gov/open/license
modified 2024-02-08 00:00:00
programCode 
                                            [
  "006:045"
]
publisher 
                                            {
  "name": "National Institute of Standards and Technology",
  "@type": "org:Organization"
}
theme 
                                            [
  "Metrology:Electrical/electromagnetic metrology"
]
title Traceable RF Power Metering Procedures With Thermoelectric Sensors.

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